After Today
by Empathist
Summary: A sequel to Doing It Again and Say It Back. Brendan and Ste are making a life together after prison. This story begins in the spring of 2016, a couple of days after Say It Back.
1. Chapter 1

**Note:** For those who haven't read Doing It Again/Say It Back, Brendan has recently started a job as manager of a club in the city centre, and Ste is working in (but doesn't own) a restaurant in the village. They're living together in Ste's rented flat.

* * *

Two days after I said to him that maybe we should look for a place to live in town, we're viewing apartments. Two days.

I thought he'd be slower to like the idea. He's lived in that same corner of that same village since he was a kid at school, so I thought he'd be nervous of moving; and I thought the idea of giving up the flat where his is the name on the rent book to live in a new one bought with my money, would set him off worrying about his independence. He gets like that sometimes, but not this time – or not yet, anyhow. I guess he sees the sense in living somewhere close to my new job, because with the hours I'm working we've not been seeing enough of each other, and when you've had years of your life taken from you, every hour together counts.

I'm not too fussed about the place we buy. There's a few things on my checklist: it's got to be in walking distance of the club; it's got to have someplace to park my car; it needs two bedrooms so the kids can have one when they come to us at weekends (they're still young enough to share) and it's got to be the kind of place that's always in demand in case we want to sell it or rent it out in a couple of years. That's when my contract managing this club finishes, and when my time on parole runs out so I'll be free to leave the country, and maybe – if we can sort something out with the kids, and if Steven wants it – we'll try our luck starting over in Dublin.

Anyways. One step at a time.

We're looking at this apartment, and it seems okay to me. It's got an L-shape living room on the corner of the building, and it's on split levels with the two bedrooms up a flight of stairs. There's people living in it but they're out and the estate agent is showing us around, and he's got all the jargon and I've stopped listening. We're in the kitchen and Steven's asking about which of the appliances are included in the sale or something, and I'm bored and staring out of the window.

He seems happy with the answers he's getting.

"Bedroom," I say to the agent.

The guy gapes at me for a moment – I don't know what his problem is – and then he recovers and he says, "Yes, of course. Upstairs."

We follow him up. He's got a nice little arse in the seat of his shiny suit, which is a welcome distraction from the crap he's spouting – _well-appointed_ this, _sought-after_ that, all the sales brochure bullshit.

The bedrooms look okay. I think we've seen all we need to see.

"Will they take an offer?" I ask the agent.

"Brendan," Steven says, "We in't decided yet."

"Shall I give you a minute?" the agent asks and he goes back downstairs.

"You don't like it?" I ask Steven, and I can see that his mood has changed since he was happily asking about the cooker and the fridge and whatever. "What's the matter?"

"Kitchen's too small," he says, and he stomps down the stairs and I'm left trailing after him as he says to the guy, "Sorry mate, not what we was after," and goes out of the flat door and down onto the street outside.

"What's got into you?" I ask when I catch up with him.

"Liked the view, did you?"

"What? Yeah, it was okay. Steven?"

"'Okay'? You practically had your tongue hanging out."

"What?"

"I saw you, Brendan!" He's stalking off down the street and I'm keeping pace with him, and people are throwing glances at us. "I saw you staring at his bum, so don't bother saying you never."

"_What_? His – ? Jesus, Steven, he was walking up the stairs right in front of us, where else was I supposed to look?"

"How d'you think I feel, right, when you're, like, flirting with some bloke right in front of me? 'Bedroom'..."

"I was asking to see the bedroom."

"It was the way you said it, all..."

"All what?" I grab him by the arm to stop him; he shakes my hand off him but he stops all the same, and stands facing me, and I ask, "All what, Steven?"

"All, like, sexy and that."

He's pouting, and the centre of his bottom lip looks dry and flaked, and I remember taking it between my teeth sometime in the early hours of this morning when we both woke up for kisses, and I remember holding his head in my hand so I could keep on kissing him when it got heavy as he fell back to sleep.

"I just wanted to see the bedroom, okay? Come on, d'you think I'm interested in some flashy kid in a nylon suit, with an iPad and a mouth full'a blarney?"

"Wouldn't put it past you," he says, but he's starting to look embarrassed now. "I'm being paranoid, aren't I?"

"Just a bit." I take his face in my hands and kiss him, and when I open my eyes I'm vaguely aware of the people passing by leaving space around us like a no go area. "I'm looking at flats with _you_, yeah? I got no interest in anything else."

"I know," he says.

"Come on. There's another estate agents there."

We cross the road together.

"You did look at his bum though, Bren, to be fair."

"I'm married, mate, I ain't dead."

We look at the details in the estate agent's window. There's a couple of likely-looking flats for the right price, then Steven says, "Look," and he starts reading from one of the screens. "_Newly back on market – price reduced_, it says."

Reduced or not, it's still twenty-five grand more than the one we've just looked at, and twenty-five grand more than I've reckoned on paying.

"Steven, that's – "

"_Two bedroom top floor_ – that's what we want, innit, two bedrooms – _ exec... executive apartment in sou... _something_-after canal-side delve... dev... _Is it _department_?"

"Development."

"_Canal-side development. _Canal-side, Brendan – I've always wanted to live by a river or something."

I touch his back.

"Come on," I say, and we go inside.

The agent's a girl this time.

She says the owner needs to sell it fast because their buyer pulled out at the last minute, so they're paying two mortgages till they offload this one. They've already moved out, so if we wanted it, we could move in as soon as the legal stuff was sorted.

We go and get my car, and meet the agent down at the property.

It's on the top floor of a three floor building. There's no lift but that's okay, the kids are way beyond the pushchair stage.

"This'd keep you fit," I say to Steven on the way up.

"I _am_ fit. You saying I in't fit?"

"Nope," I say, and I pinch his backside and he says, "Ow!"

The agent looks around and I'm ready to say, _You got a problem?_ but she gives us a smile.

We go into the flat.

"Everything you see is included in the sale," the agent says. "Blinds, light fittings, all the kitchen units and white goods, the designer sofa here, the built-in wardrobes obviously, and there's a bed in the master bedroom."

She walks us from room to room, which is stupid because it's not exactly huge and we can find our own way around; plus I can do without the commentary.

"We don't want no one's second hand beds and sofas and whatever," I say.

"Why not?" Steven says. "They're better than what we've got. My furniture's gonna look crap in here."

"Your furniture's gonna look crap anywhere."

Steven ignores that, and follows the agent into the kitchen.

"Bren, look, it's mint."

The kitchen, like the lounge – the _living space_, the estate agent calls it – has got a wide window looking out over the canal, but that's not the view I'm looking at. I'm looking at Steven assessing the stove and the fridge and the worktops, and he's half kid in a toyshop, half clear-eyed professional.

"He's a chef," I say to the agent.

"Oh, cool."

We have a look at the small bedroom.

"Not much room for two beds," I say.

"Two? It's more of a single bedroom really," says the agent.

"We got two kids," Steven says. "Only weekends and that, but... They could have bunk beds I s'pose. What d'you reckon, Brendan? The kids'll like that, won't they? Once they stop fighting over who gets the top one."

For a moment I'm back in prison, and I get the bottom bunk for the first few weeks before I'm transferred, and I'm looking up at the mesh of springs bulging under the weight of my cellmate, and I can hear it groaning every time he moves.

"Long as they don't creak," I say.

"What?"

"Nothing."

Steven lays his hand on my shoulder as the girl leads the way to the bathroom.

"There's a corner bath, and a shower unit..." She goes on saying what we're seeing, and when we get to the main bedroom she says, "So this is the bed that's included in the sale."

"We don't want someone's old bed," I say like I said before.

"Look at it though, Brendan. It's massive."

He has a point.

"It's king size," the agent says.

"We've gotta get a new one anyway," Steven says, "Ours is on its last legs, like, it dips down in the middle cos – "

"Alright, Steven." Jesus.

"No, but what's the point in getting rid of this one here and bringing in a new one just the same?"

"It's a good bed," the girl chips in. "The owner only left it because he and his girlfriend are both selling their properties to buy one together, and they don't need both their beds. Same with the sofa."

I'm being ganged up on.

"We ain't even said we're taking the flat yet, never mind the bed."

"Shall I leave you to have another look around and talk it over? I'll go and wait in my car, take your time."

"Thank you," says Steven, then when she's gone he says to me, "Don't you like it?"

"You like it?"

"I love it."

"Better buy it then, hadn't we."

He grins and throws his arms around my neck and we kiss. He's got a weatherproof jacket on and my arms are inside it, pulling him against me. I give his arse a squeeze, and kiss the side of his neck above his collar.

"Can you afford it though, Brendan? That posh bird says it's a bargain but it's, like – "

"Reckon we can afford it, yeah."

"You gonna get a mortgage then?"

"Probably get them to knock off a few grand for cash." I don't point out that no legit bank is going to give a loan to someone who's fresh from a two and a half year stretch for manslaughter. "Come on, come and flutter your eyelashes at the posh bird, see if you can get her to do a deal with the owner for us."

He glances back at the bed as we leave.

"That's like what we had on our wedding night," he says.

"Okay, Steven, we'll keep the bed if it'll shut you up."

"I know we will." He gives me a kiss on the cheek as we walk down the stairs, and we tell the agent we want to make an offer.

:::::::

He's got a shift to do at that restaurant, and I've got to get to work too. He says he'll get the bus to save me driving him to the village, so I pull up just after the bus stop and we wait in the car: no point him standing around getting cold. It's almost April, but there's not been much sign of spring so far – I don't think we've taken the kids to the park once without them putting on their wellingtons, and the heating's been on every day.

"Leah and Lucas are gonna be made up," Steven says, "Living right on top of the canal."

"We ain't got the place yet, we don't know if the guy's gonna accept our offer, so."

"Yeah, but if we do, they're gonna love it. And we're gonna love that king size bed."

"I dunno, Steven, the smaller the bed, the greater the proximity."

"The..? I don't know what that means."

"Closeness."

"Aww," he says, and he's laughing at me, "We can still be close in a big bed. Just means I won't have to lie in me wet patch, will I, cos we can just shift over."

"Very romantic."

"I'm just being practical, aren't I."

"That what you call it?" I catch sight of his bus in the rear view mirror. "Bus is coming. See you tonight, okay?"

"See you tonight." He kisses me quickly. "Love you."

"Love you. You better run."

I watch in the mirror as he joins the back of the queue and jumps on, then as the bus passes me he looks down from the window and gives me a thumbs-up.

:::::::

The flat is quiet when I get home from work. The light is on in the hallway, but Steven must have gone to bed.

I go into the kitchen and pour a glass of water from the tap. There's a note on the side: _Tea in micro. __Eat The Salad__ xx_

He's set the timer so I press start, and next to the microwave there's a small plate of salad covered in cling wrap so I start eating it while I'm waiting. I watch the seconds counting down, and stop it just before time's up so it won't beep, because at this time of night noises always sound twice as loud.

It's a bowl of pasta in sauce, loads of Parmesan, and I eat it standing in the kitchen. I'm starving, and it's good.

I leave the plates with the rest of the dirty dishes in the sink, and I go to the bathroom. Showering can wait until morning – the walls in this place are so thin, the sound of the water in the pipes would wake him if he's sleeping – so I just brush my teeth and whatever, and then I go quietly into the bedroom. I sit on the bed and take off my shoes and socks.

"Hiya." His voice is slurred with sleep. "You only just got in?"

"Few minutes." I twist around and look at him in the faint light that's coming from the hallway through the crack in the door. "I wake you?"

"Couldn't hardly sleep anyway, thinking about that flat. Did you see I brought you some dinner home from work? It's in the microwave."

"Just had it. You make it?"

"Course."

"Thank you." I shift to sit nearer the head of the bed. "Fuck all to eat at the club. Just peanuts and, I dunno, olives and whatever."

"Cocktail cherries." His teeth gleam in the dark when he smiles. "You should do proper food, people always wanna eat, don't they."

"It's a nightclub."

"I know, but the upstairs bit, people were all sitting around, weren't they, when I came to see you, not just dancing and that."

I reach and stroke my fingers through his hair. It's shower-soft, and mussed up from the pillow.

He hauls himself up the bed a bit so his shoulders rest against the wall.

I switch on the bedside lamp. I want to see his face for this: that's why I didn't phone him to tell him.

"The estate agent called this afternoon," I say. "The fella selling the flat, he's accepted our offer."

He looks blank for a moment, and then he says, "Does that mean – ?"

"You better call your landlord tomorrow, give in your notice."

"We got it?"

"We got it, Steven."

He scrabbles towards me and kisses me.

"That's brilliant! I knew we would, I just had a feeling, me."

"I gotta go see a solicitor tomorrow, get things moving. Sort out the money too."

I don't tell him that the first call I had from the agent was to say our offer had been turned down, and I had to make a higher offer – higher than I wanted to go – and sweated for an hour until the next call came to say we had a deal. Steven doesn't need to worry about that.

He rests back against the wall again.

"How long till we can move in?"

"Dunno. I'll see what the solicitor reckons. Few weeks I guess."

"I wanna start decorating."

I put my hands under the bottom of his T-shirt and push it up, and he leans forward so I can pull it off over his head.

"It don't need decorating. Looked alright to me."

"It's boring though, all white walls," he says.

"We ain't having fucking flowery wallpaper like this place." I stroke down his chest and stomach.

"Shut up, I don't want flowery wallpaper, Brendan. We at least gotta do the kids' room though."

"Okay." I stand up, start unbuttoning my shirt. "You gonna turn over?"

He shuffles down the bed a little and rolls onto his belly. I drop my shirt on the floor, then pull the cover off him and watch him wriggle his boxers down; I pull them off his ankles for him.

"Know how much notice I'm meant to give me landlord?" he asks.

"Dunno. Coupl'a months? On your knees, yeah? On all fours."

He raises himself onto his knees and elbows.

"But we don't have to stay here, do we, if it's like two months?"

"No, we can move to the new place soon as it's ours." I kneel beside him and stroke my hand over his naked back and the flesh of his rump and down the back of his thigh, and back again. "We'll just pay off the landlord if we have to, is all."

I kiss the nape of his neck, then I move around behind him.

"D'you wanna get the..?" He nods towards the lube on the bedside cabinet.

"Ain't fucking you yet, am I." I nudge my crotch against his bare arse to remind him my trousers are still on.

I lean over him and kiss him between his shoulder blades. He smells of the shower gel we nicked from our honeymoon hotel. It's not that same bottle, obviously – that one's long since run out but I've bought one to replace it. Had to pick my jaw up off the floor when they told me the price, but seeing as I'm getting him the apartment he wants and the king size bed he wants and the designer fucking sofa he wants, thirty quid on a bottle of shower gel is neither here nor there.

I kiss the small of his back then I kiss where his tail bone curls into the cleft in his backside. He shivers, and says, "It tickles," by way of explanation.

The skin on his flanks feels like raw silk. My fingers count his ribs.

I grip his hips and spread his cheeks with my thumbs and pass my tongue over his tight little hole. It feels impenetrable, a ring of gristly muscle that I lick in circles till it eventually lets me in, and then I tease him, turn my head and bite his flesh. He calls me out so I give in and lick his rim again, and this time I don't have to work for it, there's no resistance when my tongue slips in. He makes a noise like whimpering when I lick around inside him. It's cute, so.

I could make him come, just doing what I'm doing. If I put in a finger where my tongue was he'd be a helpless mess in seconds flat. But then I'd be playing catch-up.

I sit back on my heels and pull him up against my chest, and I say into his ear, "I'm gonna fuck you now. Want me to fuck you?"

"Yeah."

"I'm gonna fuck you."

I leave him, stand up and take off my trousers and boxers. He settles on his back, one hand behind his head, the other holding his dick.

"Hurry up," he says.

I pump out some lube into my palm. It's cold at first on my cock but I warm it with my hand.

"Let's see, then," I say to him, and he languidly draws his knees up to his chest and splays his buttocks with his hands. "Dirty little tart."

I walk to the end of the bed to get a better view. His hole is open, a perfect elongated _o_ with the shine of my spit around it.

"You wannit, _lover_?" he says.

He's taking the piss but, Jesus, he's sexy as fuck. Even that backstreet Manchester accent, it's just...

I get onto the bed and onto him, and his legs circle my back, and I edge my cock into him just maybe an inch or so, so I can feel his ring tight around the head. He looks shameless, dissolute.

"Dirty whore."

"Fuck off."

I kiss him but he doesn't like the bitter taste of himself on my tongue, does he, so he turns his head away. I swallow the taste, and he comes around, and soon as he kisses me I slide right into him. His insides are warm and slippery like his mouth, and muscular, dragging me deep. His cock rubs stiffly against my stomach as I move. I lift my head and look at him. As his head thrashes from side to side on the pillow, the glow from the bedside lamp throws highlights and shadows on the structure of his face – his cheekbones, his jaw.

"You're gorgeous, boy."

He opens his eyes, and when I kiss him again the kiss I get back is unfocused and I know he's going to come. His finger nails score my shoulders, his body jerks like a fit and his lips vibrate with his trapped cries. His cum spurts and oozes between us. His legs unhook from around me and collapse to the sides and I think his arms are going to do the same but he re-engages and strokes down my back, and then he grasps my arse and says, "Brendan."

There's fire in my head when I come, burning bright.

I slip out of him and pull the cover up over us, and he tucks himself under my arm.

"I'm knackered," I say.

"You're getting old."

"Fuck off. Just been a long day."

"It's gonna be better when we live near your work." He's quiet for a minute then he says, "I'm gonna see if I can get a job in town an' all. Not gonna be worth still working where I'm working now, by the time I've paid the bus fare."

"Good."

Again he's silent for a while, and I start drifting off.

"Brendan?"

"Mm?"

"Have you really got that much money just, like, knocking around, enough to buy that flat?"

"Yeah. Think so anyway."

"How come?"

"It ain't drug money, if that's what you're asking."

"What is it, then?"

He's stroking the wrist of my arm that's around him, like he thinks he'll need to keep me calm.

"Had properties to sell, didn't I. Offloaded everything when I went inside." Almost everything.

"Like Chez Chez."

"Chez Chez. Places like... in Dublin – "

"You had a place in Dublin? How come you stayed in a hotel then?"

"Ain't the kinda place you'd wanna stay. It was just a shop I rented out and a coupl'a rooms above it I used for... Just for a business address, you know? Jesus, Steven, it's gone now, okay? The money I've got, it's clean."

"I don't get why you had to sell everything anyway."

"Didn't know I'd be coming out, did I, at first – I thought I'd be getting life." I feel Steven pressing closer against me. "Wanted to see my kids were alright, put money in trust for them, and the rest of it I just put away for when... for when someone needed it. Nathan helped me out – did he tell you that? – with dealing with the solicitor and the bank, made sure they didn't take advantage."

"Nate?"

"Yeah. Did me a favour."

"He should an' all."

"Hm?"

"Dun't matter." He cranes his neck and kisses me, his hand in my hair. "I wanna pay my way, Brendan. I know it's gonna be your flat, right, but I'm gonna pay for bills and that."

"It's not gonna be _my_ flat. It's gonna be _ours_, Steven, you know? Both our names on the deeds, yours and mine." I can't believe he didn't realise that.

"But you're buying it, though, so how can – ?"

"I got more money behind me than you, yeah, but that's just how it is, okay? It's just money. Didn't I tell you I'm gonna give you the future you deserve?"

"I remember."

"I meant it. Just taking me longer than I wanted, that's all."

:::::::

It's gone ten in the morning when he appears from the bedroom in his dressing gown, hair standing on end, bleary-eyed, beautiful.

"Thought it was me that was knackered, you lazy bastard," I say to him.

"You must'a wore me out." He comes over to where I'm sitting at the table and leans down and kisses me on the cheek, his arms folded to stop his robe from gaping open. "What you doing? Thought I heard you shouting."

"Just looking at this." I indicate the paperwork laid out in front of me.

"What is it?"

"It's from the folder Nathan gave me when I got out, all the business he handled for me. Should'a looked at it before, shouldn't I." I rub my hands over my face and lean back in the chair.

"Why? There a problem, Brendan?"

"Yeah. No. Kind of, yeah."

Steven sits down opposite.

"You not got enough money, then?"

"No, there's enough. It's just, I can't get at it. Not all of it anyhow, not yet."

"How d'you mean?"

"Most of it I can, it's in accounts I can just get it out of, but there's some that's in these five year bonds."

"What does that mean?"

"It means I can't touch it for another two years. Ain't Nathan's fault, he didn't know I wasn't gonna get life, any more than I did."

"It's your money though, how can you not be allowed to touch it?"

"That's exactly what I said to the bank."

"Was that what the shouting was, was you shouting at the bank down the phone?"

"Yeah." I smile at him. "Didn't do no good. They said the only way they give your money back sooner is if you die."

"Not even if you need it for something? That's not fair."

"If there's special circumstances they might, like if I had a terminal illness or something. But wanting it for something else ain't a good enough reason."

"So, does that mean..?"

"Means I'm thirty grand short, Steven."

"And you can't get a mortgage, can you. I thought about it after: you can't get a mortgage because of prison. Maybe I could see if – "

"No." He's on the minimum wage and he doesn't even get regular shifts; no one but a shark's going to give him a loan. "It's okay. I just gotta sell something else, so."

"What? I thought you already sold everything."

"Not everything. I didn't sell... I was gonna sell it, but then I didn't, because... because I..."

"Brendan?"

"My... It's my nana's holiday house." I clear my throat, take a swig from my mug of tea, then I carry on rapidly. "Worth a lot, so Nathan said. Not the house – that's gotta be rebuilt, got a lotta damage – but the land it's on. If we pay the deposit on the flat, then by the time the rest of the money's due we can auction nana's house. Sold the club that way, didn't I. It's quick, should be quick enough and we'll have the thirty grand we need and a whole lot more. It's gonna be okay, Steven."

"That's the house that got blown up?"

"That's the one, yeah."

"How come it belongs to you now?"

"Left it to me, didn't she."

"Just you?" He's piecing this together. "Not you and Cheryl?"

"Just me." I'm staring at the papers on the table, but all the words and figures are an out-of- focus jumble.

"Was that where..?"

"Yeah. First time, yeah, that was where."

"I would'a thought you would'a sold it before." His eyes are so full of concern when I glance at them that I have to look away again. "I would'a thought you would'a wanted to get rid of it."

"I just... Doesn't matter."

"Yeah it does. It matters to me."

"I just wanted... I just wanted it to rot away. Okay? Just... just let the sea take it, or something." It sounds stupid when I put it into words; it sounds weak. "I just... I dunno. I dunno."

"Right, well." He swallows, and I look at him and he's wiping his eyes on the sleeves of his dressing gown. "We don't have to move, Brendan, right? We can stay here, or... or we can find somewhere in town to rent instead of buying, yeah? Or we can look for somewhere cheaper to buy, can't we? I mean, there must be cheaper flats than that one, right, we can get a one-bedroom one, and the kids can – "

"Steven – "

"I mean it, Brendan, I don't care if – "

"I do, though. _I_ care. This is... it's our future, yeah? That place, you know, it's been _here_." I press my finger tips against my forehead. "Long as I can remember, it's been _here_, and there's no good that's ever come of it, so..."

"So it's about time."

I nod, but it scares me. That house was in my head long before my nana left it to me, and I'm scared that by selling it – by _thinking_ about it again – I'm raising its ghosts, not banishing them.

Steven leans forward and touches my forehead like he knows what I'm thinking and wants to take it on. He rests his hand back down on the table with the other, and I look at them: there's little marks you can hardly see where the skin is textureless and a shade lighter than the rest, where he's burnt himself cooking over the years and it's healed. On his knuckles there's a hairline scar, where he's maybe split them punching someone when he's had a scrap. His nails are short but unbitten. They're good hands, practical. They're strong hands. They're more real – _he's_ more real – than any ghost.

"Yeah," I say, as much to myself as to him, "It's about time."


	2. Chapter 2

It's the Easter weekend coming up and I want to get things moving before then. I call the solicitor – the one Nathan uses for his business in England, the one he used when he was sorting out the sales of my properties for me and the trusts for my lads when I went inside – not one of the shady bastards I used to have dealings with. I get an appointment for today and I drive into Chester to see him.

I explain my predicament, the fact I'm thirty grand short on the cash I need to buy the flat we're after, and if I can't get it quick the owner of the flat is as likely as not to find someone who can. The solicitor knows my situation; I guess Nathan had to tell him my story, and I guess it was memorable enough that he still remembers it a couple of years down the line.

"Presumably you're not in a position to get a bridging loan?" he asks.

"You presume right."

"Then I'd say, yes, an auction is the fastest of the options open to you, although you should realise you're unlikely to get as good a price as you would if – "

"I just need the cash, Thomas, I don't care if it's less than it's worth. I can't lose this flat."

He gives me the name of an auction house he knows, and gives me a piece of paper that shows – and I've never seen this in black and white before – that the ownership of the holiday house was transferred officially in May 2013 from Florence Maebh Brady to Brendan Seamus Brady. Chez told me in one of her letters that Nathan had got his solicitor dealing with getting the house I'd inherited transferred into my name, but I didn't want to know. I remember how, eight months on from her death, it brought it all back to me, and the prison shrink wanted to know what had got me so agitated, and I remember finally working my way through all my old memories of her in the cold light of knowing that she knew. I told the psychiatrist all of the story of me and her, except how it ended.

This solicitor guy, Thomas, has already heard from the estate agent who's handling the flat we're buying, so he'll be getting on with whatever it is that lawyers do. He starts going through the formalities with me.

"I take it you're buying the flat in your sole name, as you're providing the finance?"

"No, it's... Both our names, me and my..." _Partner_? _Husband_? I'm still not accustomed to the terms for what we are; none of them feel like they cover it, and the words won't form on my tongue. "... My better half." That will do for now.

"Okay, for a joint purchase I'll need to meet her too, to formally take her instructions, so if you can ask her to give us a call to make an appointment. In the mean time, though, I'll just take her name and contact details if I may?"

He poises his pen.

"Steven Hay."

"Oh! I do apologise. I shouldn't have assumed..."

He's wriggling with embarrassment, and I'm tempted to sit back and enjoy it, but I guess I must be going soft because I let him off the hook.

"The moustache didn't give it away then, no?" I say, and he risks a nervous laugh. "That's Steven with a _v_, Hay with an _a_. Same address as me."

I get my phone out of my pocket and bring up Steven's number. I've got a new photo of him on his contact: he was taking the piss when I took it, doing this exaggerated pout like a fucking glamour model, and the camera caught him just as he gave it up and fell into laughing. He looks _naughty_, and he looks happy. I slide the phone across Thomas's desk, and he copies down the number.

Next stop is the auction house. I drive over to meet with a fella there so he can put me in the picture.

He likes the sound of the old house, to my surprise. I tell him it's half falling down, but he calls it a _renovation project_, says they'll have no problem selling it. He says they can list it for their next sale in three weeks' time, but there's things that need to be done. They need to send a valuer down there, and a photographer, and he says, when would be convenient for me to meet them there?

"What?"

"At the property. If you can meet our team down there, then we can – "

"No."

"We usually suggest the owner is present so – "

"No. I said no, didn't I?"

"Okay. Right, well, with your permission then, we'll go and view it ourselves. If you can arrange to let us have the keys?"

"Keys?" I don't even know if it's got a fucking door. "I told you, it's damaged. I don't even know if... I guess it's boarded-up or..." I try to collect my thoughts. "My solicitor will know. Talk to him."

:::::::

I'm at work and I get a call from Eileen. This is a rare event – she's called me maybe once in the six or seven months I've been out of prison – so I half expect there's something wrong.

"Eileen? Everything okay?"

"You got a minute?"

"Course, yeah. Boys okay?" I shut myself in the office where it's quieter.

"They're fine, Bren, as you'd know if you bothered to keep in touch."

"I keep in touch, I talk to them, don't I? I called Padraig just..." When was it, a week ago? Couldn't be more than three weeks, tops, and Declan's in touch with Steven, so. "And I seen them, ain't I."

"You saw them at Christmas, Brendan. It's the Easter holidays now."

"I'd see them if I could, you know that. You know I can't go to Dublin or I'd – "

"And whose fault's that?" She sighs. "Look, I didn't phone for a row. They want to see you – god alone knows why, but I'm not gonna stop them, and we're here for a few days, so – "

"'Here'? Where's 'here'?"

"Chester."

"You're in Chester? _They're_ in Chester? Since when?"

"We've been here a day or two. Visiting Maggie, that's all."

"And you're only just telling me?"

"I left it up to the boys if they asked to see you, and they have, so I'm telling you now. You can make the arrangements with Declan, only I wanted to make sure before you talk to him that you're not going to let them down. I mean it, Brendan, you make the arrangements and you stick to them, or it's worse than them not seeing you at all."

She was like this last time. They're _settled_, they're _happy_, don't _upset_ them. I get the picture.

"You don't have to worry, Eileen, okay? They'll be fine with us."

When we finish our phone call, I uncurl my fist and watch the colour return to my knuckles. Then I call Declan and I start doing the small talk, you know, asking him how university's going, but then there's a beep on the line and he's getting a call from his girlfriend.

"I'm gonna take this call, Dad. So when d'you wanna hook up? Tomorrow's good."

"Tomorrow? Okay, yeah, tomorrow. I'll pick you up in the morning, and we'll – "

"Not too early. It's the holidays."

"Okay. Eleven?"

"Twelve's better," he says, and he tells me the address of Eileen's friend where they're staying and I scribble it down, and then he's gone.

I have to go then and sort a dispute in the bar, but soon as I get a minute to myself I get my phone out again and call Steven. He's still at work, but finishing up soon. I tell him that my boys are over from Ireland and I'm seeing them tomorrow.

"That's brilliant. Bet you're made up, aren't you?"

"Yeah. You working tomorrow, Steven?"

"Yeah, I'm on daytime tomorrow."

"Can you take the day off? Boys'd like to see you, you know?"

"It's too short notice, I don't think I – "

"It's just one day." When he doesn't say anything back I realise I've snapped at him, like I'm saying he never puts himself out for me. I close my eyes and picture him, his eyes saying, _Are you being serious?_ And then I go on. "I thought... I thought we'd go see a movie or something, yeah, maybe go bowling after or..." Or whatever people do when their kids are strangers.

"No, cinema's no good, Brendan. You an't seen your kids for months, you don't wanna be just sat in the dark with them staring at a film."

"No. No, course not. I dunno, we'll... I'll..." I'm floundering. This is why I need Steven with me.

"I'll see about getting the day off, right, I'll swing it with the boss. I gotta go now though, Bren, but we'll talk about it tonight, okay?"

"Okay."

I wonder if he's worked out that I'm scared of being on my own with my own sons.

"Love you," he says. "Bye."

"Love you too."

:::::::

"So, no film. What if they want to see a film?" The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of carving two hours out of the afternoon when I wouldn't have to be worrying about getting the dad thing right. "We could still see a film."

Where they're staying is the other side of town from us, but the traffic's not bad so we're almost there.

"No film, Brendan. We'll get a bite to eat and then we'll do something, like, all together. Probably they wouldn't both wanna see the same film anyway. Paddy's a kid and Declan's grown up now, in't he."

"I dunno, Steven. You and me both wanna see the same film sometimes, so."

"Oi," he says, and he looks at me, and I laugh.

"Think it's this road." I take the turning and drive slowly so I can see the house numbers.

"So who's this mate of Eileen's anyway?" Steven asks.

"Girl from back home. Married an Englishman, moved over here."

"Just like you, then."

I park up and look at my watch.

"Dead on time."

"You ready?" he asks, and he leans across and gives me a kiss. "Want me to come?"

"Come on, then."

We go up to the house and I press the door bell and it makes a kind of a muted chime.

"Well posh, innit," Steven says in a whisper, "A bell not a buzzer."

"Hi, Brendan."

The woman who answers the door used to have an accent like my sister's, but it sounds as if all its ups and downs have levelled out. I guess she doesn't have to battle to be heard now that she's not mixing with others like her. I never took much notice of Eileen's friends but I remember this one because Eileen used to talk about her when she moved away.

Along with the new accent, she's acquired the kind of English manners which mean that, when she gives me a kiss on both cheeks, I can't tell if she's welcoming me or putting me in my place.

She looks at Steven like she's wondering who this is that I've brought with me.

"Magdalene," I say, "This is Steven. Steven, Magdalene."

If she was expecting any further information, she's out of luck.

"Alright?" Steven says to her. "Nice house."

"Will you come in?" she says when she quits staring at him and those manners kick in again. "The boys are around somewhere."

We're just about to go inside when Eileen appears beside her in the doorway and steps one foot out onto the step. She lets me give her a kiss.

"I expect you's are wanting to rush off, aren't you, Bren?" she says, and it's more of an instruction than a question. "The lads are just coming."

Eileen's not so much as glanced at Steven as far as I can tell, and it's pissed him off, and he says to her – loud so she can't ignore him – "How you keeping, then, Eileen? Long time no see."

"Not so bad, aye." She turns around and bellows into the house at Declan and Padraig to get a move on. "You wouldn't go and see what's keeping them, Mags, would you?"

"Sure."

Magdalene goes inside and Eileen comes out and pulls the door almost closed behind her, and starts talking at me, quiet so her friend won't hear.

"I don't want you filling their heads with prison stories, Brendan, and about god knows what goes on in this new club of yours. And you've not to let Paddy go off on his own. If he wants to come home, you bring him or you let Declan bring him, alright?"

It's like she's talking to the man I used to be and taking no account of the man I am now, and it's getting to me. It must show, or leastways Steven senses it, because I feel his hand touch my back. I take a breath.

"I ain't stupid, Eileen. And there's nothing going on in my club, it's legit. I'm legit now, okay? You have my word."

She waves her hand like there's a fly bothering her.

"And you've not to fill their heads with any other nonsense either," she says, and she looks at Steven.

"Who d'you think you're talking to, eh?" he says.

"You got something to say, Eileen, just say it."

There's talking in the hallway behind her, and Eileen drops her voice so she's almost whispering.

"Sorry, Ste, you seem like a decent lad, I shouldn'a... It's just, you got rotten taste in men."

"You and me both then," he says.

I think she'll take umbrage at him aligning himself with her, but I'm wrong. She smiles at him, a genuine smile. Her enemy's enemy is her friend, I guess.

The door opens again and the boys are there.

"Alright, Ste, how's it going?" Declan says. "Alright, Dad?"

"Hiya," Steven says. "Hiya, Paddy."

Padraig says hello to him, and looks at me sideways.

"We gonna eat then, yeah?" Declan asks.

"Was nice seeing you," Magdalene says to me as we go, and she might mean it but she might not. "Was nice meeting you, Steven."

The four of us head for the car. The two women watch us till we drive off.

Steven twists around in his seat and asks Declan, "So, does that Maggie not know about me and your dad, then?"

"Mum said we weren't to tell her. Don't think she even knows you're gay, Dad."

Then Padraig pipes up, "Wonder what mum's telling Auntie Maggie now about Ste," and he starts giggling.

I catch Steven's eye as he turns to face front again, and I wink at him and he smiles.

:::::::

We've let the kids choose what they wanted to eat, and they've said Indian. Suits us.

I say 'kids', but Declan's as tall as me now – maybe taller, but if he is I don't want to know it. He's still young enough that I can make him blush by asking about his girlfriend, though.

We've ordered plenty and we're all sharing, and it's good. Everyone's getting along. Declan's told us about university, and Padraig's said school is boring but he's into his music. Some of the bands he likes, I've even heard of because their stuff gets played some nights in the club. So I get some dad points for that.

"Michael's never heard of anyone good," Padraig says.

"He's still around, then," I say, and Steven kicks me under the table.

"He's always gonna be around, Dad," Declan says. "Getting married, aren't they."

"Married? Since when?"

"Since ages ago. Thought you knew. That's why mum's come over, cos Auntie Maggie's making her a wedding dress." Declan scoops up some dahl on a bit of naan bread and shovels it into his mouth now that he's dropped his bombshell.

I don't know why I'm bothered, but I am.

"It's funny," Padraig says.

"What's funny, son?"

He hardly looks at me at all, Padraig doesn't, and he's shy talking to me. This is not how he was before I went inside: he didn't know me much, but he was sociable back then. I fell out of his life for too long, that's the truth of it, and now I'm an object of curiosity, the man who drops back in once in a blue moon; the man who killed his granddad. There's no residual love there like maybe there still is with Declan.

"Go on, Paddy," Steven says. "Tell us what's funny, then."

"Last time I saw my dad," Padraig says to him, "He said he was getting married. Now I seen him again, and my mum's getting married. If we see him again, d'you think it's gonna be Declan getting married?"

He looks at his brother and laughs, and Declan says, "Ha ha, very funny."

I fake a laugh, but the _If _is echoing in my head.

"Anyway, we've got some news too, haven't we, Brendan?" Steven's voice drags me back.

"Which one of you's pregnant?" says Declan.

"Cheeky ba– " I start, but Steven cuts me off.

"We're moving house, getting a new flat next to the canal."

"Cool. Can we go and see it?"

"Ain't ours yet," I say. "Guess we could drive down there though, show you the outside at least if you want?"

:::::::

It's only the second time we've been here. We stand on the tow path and look up at the building, and work out which are the windows to our flat.

"Pretty cool," Declan says.

"You can go fishing," says Padraig.

"Yeah, don't really like fishing, do we," Steven says, and he's right: you never know what you're going to fish up.

"Fishing's cruel anyhow, so," Declan says.

"Thought you were the kind of vegetarian that eats fish," I say to him.

"That was when I was a kid, Dad, I didn't know anything. You can't just kill things, can you, just because you feel like it."

I look at him, try and figure if he meant something by what he said. He stares out across the canal.

It's starting to rain.

"Come on, we gonna go bowling, then?" Steven says, and he pulls my arm to get me moving.

"Must cost a bomb, that apartment," Declan says as we walk back to the car. "Granddad left you some money, did he?"

"No."

Seamus left everything – or whatever was left that he hadn't gambled away – to Cheryl's mother. He must have made the will back when they were still together and never got around to changing it, and that was okay by us. Me and Cheryl, we didn't want anything of his.

There's something in what Declan's said, though: I can only buy this flat because I've got that fucking house to sell, and it's mine to sell because of what my father did and because my grandmother did nothing. It's dirty money.

:::::::

We're usually open till three on a Saturday night, but it's Easter Sunday tomorrow so tonight we're closing at midnight. I'm upstairs on the members' floor when I get a call from one of the guys on the door, telling me someone claiming to be my son is wanting to get into the club.

I go down, and it's Declan.

"I can't let you in, it's over twenty-ones. I told you that," I say to him. I told him the other day, after we finished our day up at the bowling alley and he asked could they see the club? I told him then, sorry but it's not my own place like the old one was, and I couldn't allow kids in there.

"Come on, Dad, lighten up."

"Are you – ?" He is, he's wasted. Fucksake. "Get in here."

I drag him through the crowd on the dance floor and into the office.

"You can't push me around," he says.

"Is it just drink you've had?" I can smell it on him, and his eyes look unfocused but the pupils look normal. "Does your mother know where you are?"

"Mum can't say anything, can she, I'm old enough."

"Your mum can say plenty if you want to live under her roof. What's got into you?"

"Ain't the end of the fucking world, Dad. It's how you make your living, selling booze to people, isn't it, so you can't get on at me for – What you doing? You calling Mum?"

"I'm calling my doorman to get a taxi."

"We going back to yours? Can I stay the night?" He sits down heavily and rubs his eyes. He's suddenly a kid, and I want to laugh but I don't.

"You're going back to what's her name, Magdalene's."

"I can't go back like this. Mum'll kill me, won't she."

"You're gonna have to." Leah and Lucas are with us at home, and I won't have them waking up to find a sleeping drunk on the couch. It's unsettling, seeing that when you're a kid; it makes you worried.

"I seen you twice in three years, Dad, and you've had enough of me already?" He looks up at me, and his anger's nowhere near disguising his hurt.

"It ain't like that. I wanna see you, course I wanna see you, son, but my probation, you know? I can't go to Dublin, I'd be breaking my licence."

"You didn't think of that though when you were shooting your old man in the back." He stops, like he's expecting me to say something, do something, but I don't. I've got nothing. "Why'd you do it, Dad?"

"I... I dunno, I..."

"Auntie Cheryl says he was attacking someone, and you did it to stop him." He looks at me as if he wants to believe it.

"Yeah. He was... It wasn't – "

"See, I think you just lost it, or they wouldn'a said you'd got diminished responsibility, would they? I think it was like when you were beating Ste up – "

"What?"

"I saw you, didn't I? Years ago. I walked in on you, remember? You had him down and you were punching him like you'd gone mental." He's talking deliberately, like he's been thinking about this for a long time. "Is that what happened with Granddad? You lost it, only that time you had a gun."

"Steven never deserved it. I should'a never laid a finger on him, okay?" I sit down on the edge of the desk.

Outside the office, the music pounds like a racing heartbeat.

"So you're saying Granddad deserved you shooting him? That's just – "

"I had... I had problems, okay? My dad, he... he wasn't a good man, he did things he..."

"Mum told us he used to beat you up when you were a kid."

"Yeah."

"That's why she hardly even let us meet him."

"Yeah. Look, son, there's a lot of things I've done that I shouldn'a done, and I got... I got no excuses, including for how I've been with you two, y'know, not much of a dad. Whatever my dad was like, I should'a been... I just wasn't..."

"You can't just kill people."

"Come on." I pick up my keys, and he follows me as I go and find Maria and tell her she'll have to do the checks and lock up without me tonight.

When we get in my car, Declan says, "We going back to yours then?"

"No. You're going back to your mother."

He's silent the whole drive, first because he's sulking and then because he's fallen asleep. He wakes up when I switch the engine off.

"We here?" he asks.

"I'll call you. If your mum gives you a hard time, you can blame me, okay? Go on."

He unclips his seatbelt and opens the car door, and he starts to get out but then he sits back.

"Ste knows all the... all about what you've done, doesn't he. I mean, obviously he does."

"Pretty much, yeah."

"And when you punched him, he hasn't forgotten, has he... He wouldn't forget something like that."

"No." I wonder where this is going: if he wants me to remember my crimes, he's wasting his breath because they're always with me.

"But he's... he's forgiven you, Dad, hasn't he?" Declan is tired, I can hear it in his voice and see it in his face, but he's making the effort to put his thoughts together. "He married you after everything, didn't he, and that wasn't just for show, was it – it wasn't just for the party or for... you know, the status or whatever."

"Yeah, he's forgiven me."

"See, if it was me, I don't think I could."

"Okay."

"But Ste's not stupid is he."

"Steven's a smart man."

"So I reckon there's more he knows, or he wouldn't be able to live with you, let alone... let alone, you know, marry you. I think you're just not telling me everything cos you think I'm too young. Am I right, Dad?"

"There's things he knows, yeah. Ain't because you're too young, Declan, I promise you. There's things the judge knew that made them send me down just for manslaughter instead of... But I ain't told them to anyone else, not your mother, not anyone."

"And Ste knows, and it's made him forgive you."

"It's not been easy, it's not something he's just... It's just, we been through more than most."

"So I'm saying, I don't hate you or anything. Because I trust Ste, so I'm..."

"Giving me the benefit of the doubt."

"Yeah, that. It's just, you know, it's never gonna be like it should'a been with me and you. But I don't hate you."

"Okay."

"I mean, I reckon if there's reasons... if the reasons are enough for Ste to forgive you, I reckon I can try and forgive you or whatever."

"Thank you."

"Just so's we're not starting from the same place every time we see you. It's just easier, so. Night, Dad."

I watch him go up to the house and ring the bell, and I see Eileen open the door and yank him inside; and then I drive home.

:::::::

I listen at the kids' doors and hear their soft slow breathing, and then I go quietly into our bedroom and I get undressed and slip into bed beside Steven.

I lie staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep for the thoughts that keep circling in my mind: of what my sons think of me, of the things they believe I've done and the things I've done which they'll never know about; of the things Steven knows and the things he doesn't. And the thoughts go round in a tightening spiral, and at the centre of it all is that god forsaken house.

Must be an hour later when Steven wakes up. He moves closer and kisses my shoulder.

"You alright, Bren?"

"Declan came to the club, half cut. Had to take him back to where they're staying."

"Bet Eileen was pleased."

"He asked me about my dad... About killing him."

Steven rolls onto his stomach to look at me, his elbow across my chest.

"What did he say? What did you tell him?"

"What could I tell him? He reckons it was like when I battered you, only I had a gun so Seamus ended up dead."

"He said that?"

"Yeah."

"But you never even killed him though. It's Cheryl's fault, not yours"

"I did what I did to you."

"Shush, don't. That's over."

"It's over, but – "

"Shush. Please." He kisses me. "Please."

"He's thinking about forgiving me though, so. Says he's gonna."

"Forgiving you for what?"

"Dunno." I really don't know, now I think about it. "For being a shit dad, maybe? For getting sent down? I think... I think he's tired of it, y'know. Tired of..." Tired of the subtext in every conversation we have.

"Of being snarky with you?"

"Yeah."

I hold his face and kiss him back, and turn onto my side so we're facing each other. He kisses down my neck and the top of my shoulder, and his hand comes between us and slides into my boxers and starts kneading my cock. Heat floods it. I stroke his back over his T-shirt and squeeze his arse. He's wearing pyjama bottoms which are loose at the waist, and I get my hand inside them and reach down to the back of his thigh.

Here he is in my hands, but in my head there's other things. My son is going to forgive me – maybe – and that's because of Steven, and I'm moving into a future with this man I've spent six years loving, and it's a future I thought would only ever exist in my fantasies. And yet, for all the treatment I've had and the time that's passed and the secrets that I've told at last to the people who needed to hear them, my dad's shadow hasn't gone for good like I tried to believe it had. It's there in that old house, and it's waiting for me in the new one, seeping in through every brick that my nana's guilt money is paying for.

Steven can tell I'm not with him. He kisses my mouth hard, his tongue coming in, his hand working faster on my cock trying to bring me to him, but it's not happening – or not enough, not like normal.

I don't deserve him. He's everything any man could want, and he ought to be the only thing I can think about in this moment, but he's being crowded out.

I suck his tongue, pull his body closer. His kisses get desperate – he knows there's something wrong, he can feel it in his hand and he's doing everything to put it right, as if he thinks the problem is something he's doing or not doing, but it's not. It's me.

I push him onto his back, pull his pants down, get on top of him. His dick is rigid against me, and I hate him and I'm getting hard but I'm worrying and I'm not hard enough to get into him – nowhere near. And it's not him I hate, it's everything that's not him.

"Sorry," I say, and I can't look at him, and I get off him. "I'm tired, it's..."

"Brendan." He touches my face.

I roll away onto my side, turn my back on him.

I feel the mattress move as he pulls his pyjamas back up. And then I feel him against me, his chest pressed against my spine, and his arm comes around me and his hand rests over my heart.

"I love you, Brendan, alright?"

"Love you too."

:::::::

The kids are up, I can hear them. Steven's up too: the middle of the bed is empty.

I can smell coffee, and when I open my eyes there's a mug of it on the bedside cabinet, and also there's an Easter egg. I sit up and rub the sleep out of my eyes; reach for the coffee.

He's put sugar in it.

"That from the kids?" I ask him when he comes back into the room.

"The coffee?"

"The Easter egg."

"No, it's from me." He sits on the bed next to me. "They have got you one though, but they wanna give it to you themselves."

"They had theirs?"

"Can't you tell from the noise? They're on a chocolate high, we're gonna have to peel them down off the ceiling."

I pass him my cup and he sips from it.

"I didn't get you one," I say.

"A coffee?"

"An egg."

"That cos you like me skinny?" He smiles, and kisses my cheek. "I've had one off the kids anyway."

"Good." I take my mug back from him and take a drink. "Steven, about last night..." I don't know what to say.

"I know you've got stuff on your mind, Bren, right. I've noticed." He pauses in the hope I want to tell him what's on my mind, but I can't. "What I think is, it's your nan's house, yeah? Yeah, it's that house, cos you haven't had to think about it for ages, have you, but now you've got to because of selling it, and it's like... I think it's like, stirred everything up again in your head, right, all the memories and that. And you've not talked about it, you've just gone all Brendan, and... Well, not _all_ Brendan, but... But anyway, right, if you don't wanna talk about it – "

"I don't."

"That's fine, right, you in't got to. You're probably all finished with talking anyway, aren't you, from all that talking you had to do with the psychiatrist bloke in prison. But, Brendan?"

"Yes." I wonder what's coming.

"D'you know what I think?"

"No. But I'm sure you're gonna tell me."

"Don't be like that. But yeah, I am gonna tell you. I think you should go to the house."

"No. No, I ain't going back there, no."

"No, but listen, right. Remember when we was in Dublin, Brendan? And we went to your dad's pub?"

"Course I remember."

"And I know he came over here after, and everything got... y'know... But it helped, going to that old pub, didn't it? It helped, right, and I just think if you went to that house now that your dad's gone and your nan's gone... I just thought..."

He trails off as if he's resigned himself to me stonewalling him.

"You'll go with me though, Steven, yeah? If I go – if I do it – you'll go with me?"

My gut is twisting with the thought of it, but if he's with me, then maybe I can do it. Maybe I owe it to him; to us.

"Course I will, Brendan." He kisses me, his fingers stroking the back of my neck. "You're not on your own any more."


	3. Chapter 3

I've been putting it off, and Steven knows it.

We couldn't go while we had the kids – that old house is not a fit place for children – and we had them until Monday. The rest of the week he's on the evening shift at work, and I can always swing it so I don't have to be at the club during the day, so we could have gone on Tuesday or Wednesday, but we haven't, and he hasn't pushed it. He hasn't so much as mentioned it, and I half wish that he would because then I could pick a fight about it, and if I pushed the right buttons there'd be enough bad blood between us to let me put it off some more.

It's Wednesday night and I'm in the kitchen. No, not Wednesday night: it's Thursday morning, two-something, and I'm just home from work and I'm stood at the counter eating the dinner he's left in the microwave for me. I hear the bedroom door open.

"Alright?" I say, and I look round to see him stood in the doorway. He's in an old pair of boxers and a T-shirt of mine, and socks, and his hair is crested on the top of his head from how he's been lying. "This is good, this... risotto, d'you call it?"

"Yeah, risotto." His voice is low with deference to the late hour. "Brendan?"

I turn back to my dinner. When he says my name like that it's always a prelude to something he wants to say, and I can guess what it is this time.

"It's good risotto," I say between forkfuls.

He comes and stands behind me, puts his arms around my belly and rests his face against the back of my shoulder. It feels as if he might fall back to sleep right where he is.

"You're not meant to eat standing up," he says. "It's bad for you."

"Who says?"

"Amy, she says it to the kids, dun't she. You can't digest it properly or something."

"That's just to get them to sit down, Steven. One of those parent things, ain't it, just a trick. There's no scientific basis."

"I thought it was true."

He's got his eyes closed, I reckon – he feels heavy against my back. I finish my dinner and my glass of water, and then I turn around in the circle of his arms. He picks a bit of rice off the corner of my moustache and wrinkles his nose, and then we smile at each other and kiss. No tongues, just lips pressed on lips, kiss, kiss, kiss. We stand here, holding on, his hair against my cheek. I breathe in a sigh, and get the scent of him; he's brought the humid sweetness of bed with him.

"That why you said it to me, Steven?"

"Mm?"

"To get me to sit down."

"No." The word vibrates against my collar bone.

"You were gonna ask me something though. It's okay."

"I wasn't gonna... I didn't wanna, y'know..."

"It's okay. We'll go tomorrow."

He looks up at me.

"But only if you want to, though, Brendan, cos – "

"I know."

He kisses me and he moves all of his body against me but I shut him down – I evade his mouth and tighten my arms to hold him still. We haven't fucked since before we didn't fuck on Saturday night. We fooled around a night or two ago when he followed me into the shower, a bit, and yesterday morning when he woke up with a hard-on I sucked him off; but we haven't fucked. I don't know why.

"Bren – "

"Get back to bed, Steven, yeah? I'm just gonna get a shower." I release him. "Go on."

"Okay."

"Good lad." I edge out from between him and the worktop, and stop in the doorway and turn and see him putting my plate and glass into the sink. "I love you," I tell him.

"Yeah, but you're coming to bed though, in't you?" There's an edge of panic in his voice.

"Course. Just, y'know, in case you're asleep when I come."

"Oh, right." He manages a smile, and he says it back: "I love you too."

In the shower I lean my forehead against the tiles and let the water run over me until it goes cold, as it always does at this time of night, and then I turn up the pressure and the spray feels like needles as it hits my skin.

I unlock the bathroom door, but it turns out I didn't need to lock it because he didn't follow me, or at least I didn't hear if he tried the door. I hope he's asleep. I put on jogging bottoms and a vest. He's on his side of the bed – he hasn't taken possession of the middle yet – but when I get in on my side he moves across and lies his head on my shoulder. He doesn't speak and he settles into sleep: he's got the message that we won't be fucking tonight.

In my dream though, I'm Superman.

:::::::

He's up before me. I find him in the kitchen. He's got the radio on low enough not to wake me, loud enough that he doesn't hear me when I arrive in the doorway as he dances along to it. 'Dances' might be putting it strongly, but his backside in his grey trackies is moving in a way that holds the attention.

"You perving on me?" he says when he turns and sees me, and his smile is like a light coming on.

"Would I?"

"It's raining, but they've said it's gonna stop," he says. "I was gonna do a cooked brekkie but then I thought you might just want toast. But we've got sausages and that if you want? I think there's eggs... Yeah, there's eggs, so I can – "

"No, you're right." I don't want anything. "Toast is good. Thank you."

"Sit down then."

"You don't have to wait on me, Steven, I can get me own breakfast."

"I've put it on now, an't I." He hands me a mug of coffee.

I go and sit down at the small table, and in a minute or two he puts a plate in the middle with a heap of toast on it, and sits opposite me. We both eat and he talks – about his work last night, about what he's thinking of getting Lucas for his birthday at the weekend, about which of the furniture in this place is decent enough to take to the new place when we move in. I don't know if he notices I'm barely eating half as much as he is, and then I think maybe the reason he's put it on a shared plate instead of a plate each is because he hopes we'll neither of us notice.

I listen to him talking, and it's keeping me calm. He's my normal.

:::::::

It's seemed a long drive, but we're getting close now.

"Are we nearly there yet?" he asks me.

"What are you, eight? Yeah, ten, fifteen minutes."

He switches the car radio off. It's only some station he's found playing pop music, but it's been okay and he's been nodding along to it when a tune's taken his fancy, so I'm surprised he's turned it off. I go to switch it back on for him.

"No, don't," he says, and he stops my hand before I touch the control.

"We ain't there yet, Steven, we don't have to turn it off."

"No, I know."

"So why'd you turn it off then?"

"Don't matter. You don't like it much anyway."

"It's okay, I don't mind it."

"Yeah, but..."

"What?"

"I just thought... Right, I just thought, if a song comes on, like, just when we get to the house, you're... If you ever hear it in the future, like, if it comes on the radio or something, it's just gonna remind you of... Cos songs do that, don't they? They take you back."

I don't say anything. I just touch his knee for a second.

:::::::

The sky is grey but the rain has stopped for now.

"We've run out of road," he says when I pull up.

"Yeah. Gotta walk from here. Ain't far though, so."

We get out and he stretches, and his weatherproof jacket crackles in the wind as he puts it on.

Our feet slide on the sheer stony path down to the beach. As we walk I get the smell of the sea, and it's different from how it smells in Dublin and in Belfast; I remember it now from the last time I was here, treading these sands with my sister ahead of me with her arm around my nana, and Walker bringing with him the secret of what we'd done the night before – plus a whole other bag of secrets of his own that I didn't know about yet – and the back of my neck prickling like something was coming.

We come around where the thicket of trees curves back above the beach and the house comes into view. I tell Steven, this is it.

"It's like a secret place, this," he says, and he's right, there's plenty of secrets here.

"Gets near enough cut off when the tide's high sometimes, so my nana said."

"It's bigger than I thought," he says when we get closer. "How come your nan had a house in England?"

"Dunno... Must'a come down to her from her mum and dad, I think. They were business people; she went the other way though, told us she was a hippy sorta thing when she was a girl, y'know, least till she met my granddad."

We stop and look up at the house. There are high wooden hoardings across the front of it a few feet from the building hiding the lower half of the house from view, the white paint on them thinning and dirtying where the salt winds have battered it. The upstairs windows are broken, what's left of their frames is blackened, and they're boarded up from the inside.

We head up and over the thick sedge grass that's taken over the old path. There's a new padlock on the hinged panel of the hoarding, and bare wood where an old lock must have been prised off.

"Somebody been here?" Steven asks.

"Yeah, from the auctioneers. They phoned me, asked if they could break in so the valuer could see the place. Guess they've been already."

They'll be showing the place to interested parties too. Not today though, I hope.

"You not got a key though, no?"

"No. I didn't think. Didn't even know it was boarded up like this; all's I knew was the explosion, didn't I. Didn't think."

"It's too high to climb over."

"Come on, see what it's like round the back."

We follow the perimeter along the front and round the side. Looking up, it looks as if the fire damaged the front of the house not the back, and the hoarding finishes part way along the side, where it's attached flush against the wall of the house. We push our way through the overgrown bushes and round to the back of the building. Here, the ground floor windows are boarded over against vandals, I guess, not because they got blasted out, and the upstairs ones are intact and uncovered. The back door isn't covered over: it's solid oak, tougher than any nailed-on planks would be. I haven't looked at this door for twenty years or more, but I remember the pattern of knots in the wood.

Steven tries the handle.

"Locked," he says.

I reach up under the lintel and feel along the narrow shelf of bricks. Something crawls onto my hand and I jump back.

"Jesus."

I try to shake it off. The spider clings – fuck knows how – to my sleeve for a second, pale and dusty against the black leather, and then it drops onto the step and stands there recalibrating for its changed situation, then it runs like hell for shelter.

I reach up again, and this time my fingers find the key.

The lock is stiff, but it turns.

It's dark in the house. I try the light switch but the electricity is off, of course. We leave the door open so it's not pitch black, and go in and through the kitchen. The floor must have been swept sometime, because there's no debris underfoot. There's nothing here at all – the cooker's gone and the old dresser. What wasn't destroyed in the fire has been cleared away.

My eyes adjust to the gloom and I go through.

"It's creepy," Steven says.

I'm at the bottom of the stairs. The handrail has gone and there's just a few stumps of the bannister struts left. It's lighter upstairs because the light from the back windows must be coming through the doors onto the passageway; lighter like it's trying to lure me to go up.

"Shit." The first tread collapses soon as I put my weight on it.

I step on the next one and it creaks but holds.

"Brendan, d'you have to go upstairs? It's dangerous."

"It always was."

I tell him to stay where he is, and I go up.

Half way along the passage I stop. The ceiling is lower than I remember, and the walls are closer, and I don't know why I've come here.

"We can go if you want, Brendan, right." He's come up with me. "We don't have to stay here no more, do we, not if you don't want to."

At the end of the passageway I pull open the door. It's too dark to see anything at all at first, but after a minute I can make out that there's nothing to see: the room has been emptied. Everything has gone. That bed has gone.

I go over to the window, and I work out by touch that the hardboard covering it isn't nailed into place, it's wedged, and I feel around it for a gap to get my fingers in. I find one, and pull at the board, and Steven joins me and between us we prise it out.

There's not much sun but it seems bright after the darkness, and fresh air comes in through the missing panes. We both turn and look at the room. The walls and ceiling are charred grey, and the paint on the radiator is blistered and melted. There's no smell from the burning though; it's been too long for it to still be lingering I guess.

"This was my room. Every time we stayed here, I always had this room. It was... I liked looking at the sea, you know, it... it was..."

Steven moves a step closer like he's going to reach out and touch me but I shrink from him. I can't be touched, not in here, and his hand drops back to his side.

"Did you come up here last time you was here?"

I nod, and I turn and look out of the window.

"This is where she told me. My nana, she came up here that time and she told me that she knew."

"Why did she tell you? After all them years, why did wanna tell you then?"

"I dunno. Catholics, ain't we. We all confess in the end."

"No, but why did she have to tell it to you? She could'a confessed to... a bloody priest or something, right, cos all she done was hurt you more, didn't she? She just done it to make herself feel better, she weren't even thinking of you."

I can hear the fight in him to hold in his rage.

"She died though, Steven. That same day, she died." I don't know if he believes that I killed her or if he'd rather believe my retraction of that confession. "She got hers."

"Good. I hope she suffered. Whatever she died of, if it was the cancer or... I hope she suffered."

"She... She asked for forgiveness."

"From God?" There's contempt in his voice.

"From me."

"So did you forgive her?"

"I told her what she'd taken from me."

"Did you forgive her, though?"

"No. Maybe she thought I did, I dunno."

"But she died knowing what she'd done to you."

"Yeah."

"Good."

Steven doesn't ask about her any more, but he's still here.

I pick up the hardboard and lift it into the window, and shove it till it's wedged back in place. When I turn back to Steven he's a shadow in the doorway and for a moment I feel nauseous, then my mind catches up and I swallow it down.

"Come on," I say. "I'm done here."

He goes out and I follow behind him until we're at the top of the stairs, then I move him out of the way and walk down ahead of him.

We find our way to the back door and out. I lock it and put the key back in its hiding place.

I touch him on the back, then I lead the way around to the front of the house, and we walk down to where the scrubby greenery thins out as it meets the sand. Everything has been whipped dry by the wind since we went inside, and we stop and stand looking out across the beach to the sea. There's a sailing boat scudding along out there; otherwise we could be the last people left on earth.

"I brought this," Steven says, and he pulls out of the pocket of his jacket a half-bottle of whiskey. "I can drive going home."

"Thank you."

I take it from him and unscrew the cap and drink a slug of it. It sears and warms.

"Thought you might need it, didn't I."

I offer him the bottle: "A mouthful won't hurt."

He drinks and hands it back, and I keep it then. We neither of us say anything for a long while.

It's Steven who breaks the silence in the end.

"It's beautiful here."

_Beautiful_. It's seems a strange word to hear from him, and he pronounces it carefully – he says the _t_ in the middle like he says every _t_ and every _h_ when he's reading aloud instead of dropping them in his usual way – as if he feels its strangeness too.

"I thought so too, Steven, I guess. Before my dad... When we first started coming here, y'know, it was... I thought it was paradise."

"So you'd been here before the time when he..?"

"Came here a coupl'a times I think, when I was... I dunno. All's I remember is looking forward to coming back here, and then..."

"What changed? I don't mean, like, for you. I mean, why did Seamus suddenly wanna..?"

I take another drink.

"I don't know, Steven. I used to try and figure out what I'd done to... Came up with all kinds of reasons, but – "

"It weren't you, Bren. It was nothing to do with you."

"I know that now, don't I. Just took me all my life to get the guilt out of my head, is all." I think for a minute. "It was after his old man died – my granddad. It was the first time we came here after he'd gone."

"So d'you think your dad was too scared to do nothing when his dad was around?"

"There was... There were things he did, Seamus, before he... Things he said, meant nothing at the time but when I think back, there's... there's ways he shouldn'a been around a child. I was already scared of him, see, long as I can remember. And then after my granddad passed..." I fall back into silence and then something drifts into my mind. "_The falcon cannot hear the falconer_."

"What? I don't..?"

"It's just a poem." I try and remember how it goes, but only torn pieces of it come to me. "_Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold... The blood-stained... _No,_ the blood-dimmed tide is loosed... The... the... innocence is drowned_." The rest of it eludes me for now. "Wanna know what's funny, Steven? I thought it would just be _here_. Cos everything went back to normal when we went home, didn't it, so I thought... I thought he wasn't gonna do it unless we were here. Couple of weeks, that lasted. And you know what else is funny?"

"None of it's funny, Bren."

"I loved him. Even after he..."

"After he raped you."

"I just wanted to... to believe... I wanted something to be the same, you know? Cos everything was out of control and I... Then I figured, if someone you love can be like that to you, you can't trust it. You can't do it, you can't... you can't feel it."

It's quiet here. I can hear the movement of the sea, unless it's the wind in the trees I'm hearing; and then I hear a sob, and I look at Steven and his face is wet with tears, and I say, "Steven, I'm sorry. Sorry. Sorry, I shouldn'a brought you – " And then he stops me with a shake of his head.

He dries his eyes with the heels of his hands and he looks up at me, and when he speaks he's gulping for breath between the words.

"My heart is so full up."

"Come here." I crush him into my arms. "Come here. Come here." I kiss his cheek and taste his tears, and then I kiss his mouth, and his ribcage heaves with each breath.

I hold his head and we kiss, and it's just us, and his hands are inside my jacket and then at my belt, and then he's got my jeans undone and his hand inside. He turns around so his back's to me, my cock still in his fist, and with his free hand he brings my hand to reach around him and I slide it inside his trackies and get hold of him, and his balls are soft and his dick is hard and I kiss his neck, and his grip on me loosens as his own pleasure takes him over.

"Fuck me," he says, and we move away from the clumps of grass and stones, down onto the sand, and he tugs his pants down to his knees.

I jack him off rapidly, and I cup my other hand to catch his cum when he jerks and spills, and I smear it, warm and slippery, across his hole and onto my cock. He drops to his knees and braces on all fours and looks at me over his shoulder.

"No. On your back." I need to see his face, see him wanting me.

He gets to his feet and kicks off his trainers and takes his trackies and boxers all the way off, and then he lies down on the sand and I kneel between his legs. I fall onto him and kiss him, then I push his thin sweater up to expose his chest, and I kiss his belly and lick each nipple and scrape my teeth across them. There are goosebumps on his skin, and the hairs on his legs bristle under my palms when I sit back and stroke his thighs, and his cock is mottled and spent.

I try his hole with my fingers through the slick of his cum: it's tight but it gives and I feel the heat inside him. His eyes close and I say, "Steven," and he opens them. "Tell me."

"Fuck me. Love me."

I lie forward and kiss him, and he hooks his ankles around my back and when I breach him, the muscles inside him grab me and take me.

"Steven." I feel his finger nails scratch at my back through the leather. "Steven."

"I love you. I... Fuck. _Fuck_... I love you. I love... I love you."

As my pace gets up he loses his words and it's just noises he makes, and his arms flail above his head, his fingers clawing into the sand. His sounds go straight to my dick and I come, and there's thunder in my head and flashes of blood red, and I roar with it.

I collapse onto him. He's gasping underneath me; we're both gasping. I roll off onto my back and zip up, and I reach for his tracksuit bottoms and drape them across him. We lie looking at the sky but I have to shut my eyes for a minute because the clouds seem like they're spinning.

When I stand up, he holds out his hand to me and I pull him to his feet. I help him brush the sand off his arse and the backs of his legs, and he shakes out his clothes and steps into them and puts on his trainers.

"Better shake your jacket off too, there's sand in your hood."

He takes it off and does what I suggest, then puts it back on.

"Home?" he asks, and we head off along the beach without looking back.

I look at the sea as we walk. Here and there there's a break in the cloud and where the sun filters through, it glitters on the waves in the distance. Steven was right: it's beautiful.

When we reach the car I forget he's meant to be driving, so he says, "Oi, other side," and I go around and get in the passenger side.

He fidgets in his seat as we set off.

"What's the matter?"

"Got sand in me pants," he says, and he laughs.

"We'll get in the shower when we get home."

:::::::

I'm soaping him. He stands with his arms around my neck, and I smooth the shower gel into his pits and over his back and his backside and in the crack of his arse, and then he turns around and his spine slides against my chest, and I soap his throat, the light muscles of his chest, his belly, and I lift his cock and wash his balls. He smells of vanilla and brown sugar. I taste the water that pools in the hollow above his collar bone.

I turn and face the tiles and lean there, and he does my back. Then I take the shower head down from its bracket and rinse him off, chasing the soap from every plane and crevice of his body. The white foam spirals into the drain at our feet and washes away, along with the last grains of sand.


	4. Chapter 4

_Brendan. Brendan._

Steven's voice seems a long way off when I first hear it, but I'm surfacing from sleep and now I can tell it's not far away: it's quiet but it's right here. I move my head on the pillow before I open my eyes, and he must realise I'm waking up because he holds my face then and kisses me.

"Brendan, sorry, I would'a let you sleep but..." He kisses me again. "... I've gotta go down the shops, right, and Leah wants to stay here and do Lucas's cake."

It's Lucas's birthday; I remember now.

Steven is kneeling on the bed, and he smiles at me. I pull his head down and take another kiss.

"What's the time? Opened his presents, has he?"

"Half eleven. Yeah, he's been up since seven, I couldn't stop him. And I couldn't get you up, could I, you didn't come to bed till five."

"Saturday night's always a late one, Steven, I couldn't get out of it. He like the Lego?"

"He loves it, yeah. He knows everything's from both of us." He bends over me and we kiss again. "You're all stubbly. Is that alright if I take Lucas out with me and leave you with Leah? There's some stuff Amy wants me to get for the party, and anyway, Leah dun't want Lucas to see the cake when she's decorating it."

"It's fine. Get a shower first though, can I?"

"Yeah, course."

:::::::

I take some clothes into the bathroom with me and get dressed in there after my shower. When I come out, the kids have turned up the volume and they're hyper.

"It's my birthday!" Lucas hollers as he runs at me.

I pick him up and carry him into the lounge. There's a mess of toys and wrapping paper, and I put him down in the middle of it all.

"Your birthday, is it?"

"Yes."

"That what all these presents are for?"

"Yes! I got loads and loads and loads and loads."

"How old are you now, then? Twenty-one, are you?"

He laughs, "No."

"Are you five?"

"No."

"Higher," Leah says.

"Ten?"

"Lower," they both say.

"Nine?"

"Lower!"

"Eight?"

"Lower!"

"Six?"

"No!" Lucas says, "Higher!"

"Seven...teen?"

Lucas falls about laughing. I must be funnier than I think I am.

"You know really," Leah says. "You put your name in that card, and it says seven on it. You're pretending."

I wink at her.

Steven comes in from the kitchen and hands me a mug of coffee.

"There you go, Daddy Brendan," he says, and he gives my arse a discreet squeeze. "Right, birthday boy, get your shoes on and we'll get down the shops. Leah and Brendan want some peace and quiet to decorate your cake, don't they."

"Leah's decorating the cake, ain't she, so," I clarify.

"Leah wants you to do it with her. Come on, Lucas, shoes!" Steven kisses me on the cheek. "Won't be long. Love you."

"Better not be. Love you too."

:::::::

We've negotiated the making of the icing, following the instructions on the packet.

Spreading it on the cake is my job, apparently, so I'm trowelling it onto the top of the sponge and around the sides. Steven has made the cake and sandwiched it with some kind of gooey cream between the layers, so at least we know it's going to taste okay, whatever kind of a hash we make of the look of it.

"That'll do, yeah?"

"You missed a bit." Leah's sat on the worktop to give her a better view of what we're doing.

I add a bit more icing where she's pointed out the gap.

"Okay?"

"Very good," she says.

"So you're gonna do the... the artistic stuff. Good."

Leah takes over now, with the Smarties and hundreds-and-thousands and whatever.

"Did you make this cake?" she asks.

"No, sweetheart, your dad made it. He's the one that's good at cooking, ain't he."

"You know how to make cakes too, you made one for Daddy. Me and Lucas helped though."

"You remember that?" For a second I'm disorientated: it was three years ago, going on a lifetime. "Yeah, you and Lucas helped."

She's concentrating on what she's doing, spelling her brother's name out in sprinkles on the icing before it sets. A strand of hair has come loose from her ponytail and I tuck it behind her ear.

"Then Mummy came back, didn't she," she says, and it seems like she hasn't just been concentrating, she's been remembering too, like I have. "It was a surprise."

"Yeah, she came back, little while after we made that cake, didn't she. That's because she was missing you two, and your daddy'd been looking after you for a long time, hadn't he? So it was her turn."

"You didn't wave."

"What?"

"We waved at you, but you didn't wave at us."

"When, princess? When are you talking about?"

"When we were in the taxi with Mummy."

"When she took you away? I... I didn't see you waving, I guess I was just... just looking at your dad, cos he..."

"He was sad."

"Yeah. We both were."

"Take the brown Smarties out, I only want the nice colours. I'm doing a seven in the middle."

"Okay."

"And when we came back with Mummy to visit my dad, you weren't there any more. Daddy was crying."

"I'm sorry."

"That's okay. You came back in the end, like the ducks."

"The ducks?"

"They go away but then they come back. I told Daddy you were coming back but he didn't believe me."

"I thought I wasn't coming back either, see."

"Mummy said sometimes grown-ups stop loving each other."

"She – ? I didn't... That wasn't why I left."

"I know. You went to prison." She looks at the cake for a minute. "We can put the candles on it now."

"Think we better leave the candles off till we get to your mum's, or it's not gonna fit in the tin."

"Oh yeah. Okay." She holds her arms out to me to lift her down, and then she says, "Brendan?" and I'd swear she's got Steven's genes in her as well as his love.

"Yep?"

"Daddy said you didn't do what they said you did." She smiles. "That's how I knew you were coming back."

"You're a clever girl, Leah."

"I was scared about Daddy being all on his own though."

She's reliving the feeling now, it's showing on her pale little face.

I squat down so I'm looking up at her.

"What was it you were scared of, sweetheart, hm?"

"In case Daddy died when Mummy took us home again, like Doug said."

I get a prickling on the back of my neck.

"What d'you mean, Leah? What d'you mean, 'like Doug said'?"

"I ran away. But Doug said my dad would die without me and Lucas."

Jesus. I'd kill him for that, if the fucker wasn't dead already.

"That's not true, Leah, okay? Douglas must'a meant – "

"Daddy needed us to look after him."

"Listen to me, sweetheart, okay? It ain't your job to look after your dad. It's your dad's job to look after you, and it's your mum's job to look after you, and it's my job to look after you, yeah?"

"And it's Simon's job to look after me."

"Who?"

"You know. Mummy's boyfriend."

"Simon, is it? Okay, yeah, it's Simon's job to look after you. And you don't have to worry about your dad no more, because it's my job to look after him, ain't it." I touch her on the nose and she smiles, and I stand up. "Now, you gonna help me clean up the kitchen before your daddy and Lucas get back?"

"No, I can't," she says, and she leaves me to it.

"Okay."

:::::::

When Steven gets home, I hug him.

"What's that for?" he says.

_Daddy was crying. He was sad._

"Nothing. We gonna get going or what?"

"I did the cake," Leah says.

"Can I see?"

Leah takes her dad into the kitchen and he opens the tin and has a look.

"Brendan did the icing and I did the writing," she says.

"I'll have to watch out, won't I, with two more chefs in the family. You'll be after my job." He looks at me, all kind of glowing, and I roll my eyes. Then he says to Leah, "We got you a present, didn't we, Lucas? To say thank you for decorating the birthday cake."

Lucas roots around in a carrier bag and presents his sister with something. She shows me: it's hair things. Clips or whatever, with butterflies on.

"What about Brendan?" she says to Steven. "He helped too."

"I'll have to think of something to give him later," he says, and I'll take the glance he throws at me as a promise.

"What are you going to give him?" Lucas asks.

"Don't know," Steven says. "Maybe I'll give him a big sloppy kiss."

"Yuck," says Lucas.

Steven laughs, then he tells him, "Come on then, let's get you ready or you're gonna miss your own party. You an' all, Leah."

I go to the bedroom to change into a suit. Steven comes in after a minute or two and starts looking through his clothes.

"Dunno what to wear," he says.

"Wear what you got on. I'm only putting a suit on cos I've gotta go to work after, I ain't dressing up for a seventh birthday party, am I."

"No, I know, but I don't want the other mums thinking I'm a... a..."

"Council rat."

"Shut up, no. Yeah, well, I don't. I don't wanna show me kids up, do I."

"Steven, you're the bollocks, okay? None of them's gonna be better than you."

He stops what he's doing and looks at me with a smile like he thinks I've gone daft.

"Aww," he says. "That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me."

"Fuck off taking the piss." I get my suit jacket from the hanger on the back of the door.

"Shush, language. Kids are just outside."

"Anyhow, the mums don't stay do they? They ain't gonna be taking no notice of what you're wearing, Steven, they're gonna just drop their kids and f... and get off for a coupl'a hours."

"Mate, how long since you been to a kids' party? The mums all stand in the kitchen drinking wine nowadays."

"Jesus. Sounds terrifying."

He laughs, and holds up the blue sweater Amy gave him for Christmas.

"This one?" he asks.

"Yeah."

He unzips his hoodie and puts the sweater on over his T-shirt. It fits him perfectly, not tight but just clinging softly; Amy must have his size memorised.

"Pass them jeans. The dark ones."

I pick them up from the pile of clean laundry on the chair and hand them to him. He sits on the bed and takes off his trainers without untying the laces, then slides off his tracksuit bottoms and pulls on the jeans over his purple boxers. He puts his trainers back on (laces still tied) and stands up to button his flies. He doesn't seem to know I'm watching him. I mean, he must know, mustn't he – experience would tell him I'd be watching him – but he doesn't react to it, doesn't preen or bask. He's just a lad getting dressed.

He puts his hoodie back on and I zip it up to his chin.

"Ta," he says, and his eyes are bluer than his sweater.

"That's no problem, Steven."

We've got to get going. We round up the kids and all the paraphernalia to take to Amy's, and go out to the car.

"You know what I love?" Steven says to me as the kids get into the back.

I open my mouth to tell him one of the things that he loves, but he shakes his head to stop me: there are children present.

"No, Steven. Why don't you tell me what you love?"

"I love... No, nothing, dun't matter."

"What were you gonna say?" I'm intrigued now.

"Right, don't laugh, Brendan, right, but I love that when we've got the kids, you know, if we pick them up on a Saturday... You know you used to, like, take the child seats out'a the car soon as we got here, and not put them back in till we was taking them back to Manchester? Well, you don't do that no more, do you. I mean, this last coupl'a times, you've left the seats in the car all weekend, so you've, like, gone to work with them still in, and it's..."

"Did I do that?"

"Yeah, you did... I know it's nothing, right, but I just..."

"Yeah. I did, didn't I."

:::::::

We pull up outside Amy's house and get the kids out. They run up and ring at the door, and Amy opens it and gives them a hug.

Steven's got the cake and so on, and I follow him with the kids' clothes and bits and pieces that they don't keep at ours. Him and Amy kiss on the cheek.

"Shall I take those?" she says to me, polite like she usually manages these days. "Simon can help you with the seats."

She calls him over her shoulder and he comes outside. He's alright, Simon. Not that we know each other, but this is the routine, the two of us swapping the kids' seats over from their car to mine when we come to pick Leah and Lucas up, and back from mine to theirs when we bring them back after the weekend, leaving Amy and Steven to organise the kids. We take our time, or at least I do: I'm not comfortable in their house, any more than Amy's comfortable with me in there.

The birthday party's not starting for another hour or so, so there's time for our kids to start getting hyper before the rest arrive. Lucas is ripping open his presents from his mum when I go inside, and one of them's an aeroplane so he starts running around with it in his hand, making jet noises and dive bombing anyone in his path. Steven has to grab him because Amy's getting stressed, and we sit down and get them to look at a book so their mother can get on with whatever she's doing in the kitchen.

They come in a while later, her and her fella, with cups of tea. She makes a good cup of tea, I'll give her that.

"You all sorted now, Ames?" Steven asks.

"Think so. Haven't sat down all day, have we?"

"Looks nice anyway, dun't it, all the food and that."

"And the balloons," Leah says.

"That was Simon's job," says Amy. "Thanks for making the cake, Ste, and the sausage rolls and pizza things."

"No worries. The cake weren't just me, though. Leah decorated it with Brendan, didn't she."

"It was Leah," I say. "Tea's good, Amy, it's..."

"Should be able to get out to the garden if the weather holds." Simon fills the gap in the conversation. "Thought we might do a bit of five-a-side, you know, tire them out a bit. You up for that?"

"Yeah, that's boss," says Steven. "Bren?"

"Ain't really dressed for it." I see Amy looking at me, and I bet she's thinking I've put a suit on just so's I don't have to get involved. "Going to work after, so."

"On a Sunday?"

"The club's open seven nights."

"No rest for the wicked," she says.

"He gets a night off in the week," Steven says. "Two sometimes, depends. It's gonna be better when we move, though, cos at least then you can walk home, can't you, and I can drop in and see you at work like when – "

"You're moving? Since when?"

We weren't going to say anything until we'd signed the contract, but Steven's mouth has run away with him.

"It's brilliant, Ames, it's this flat in the middle of Chester and it's right by the canal, and we can decorate it how we want cos it's, like, our own place. And I can walk to the station, 'stead of it being a bus ride, so it's gonna be easier to get here if I'm getting the train."

"So you're buying it? Not renting?"

"Yeah."

"Not being funny, Ste, but how can _you_ afford to buy a flat?"

She knows the answer to that question, but he answers her anyway.

"Brendan's buying it, obviously." He looks awkward, as if seeing this arrangement through her eyes has made it something to be ashamed of.

"Obviously," Amy says.

"Are we moving too?" Lucas asks.

"It's gonna be just how it is now, son," I say. "You'll still come to us for the weekends, only it's gonna be a new flat, okay?"

"Only thing is," Steven says, "It's a bit smaller, right, so you'll be sharing a bedroom, you and Leah, like you do at Granddad's. Is that alright?"

"Are we allowed to bring our toys?" Leah asks.

"Course you are," Steven says. "And, guess what?"

"What?" they both say.

"We're gonna get bunk beds for you, like when we went on holiday, d'you remember?"

The kids are happy at that. Job done.

Amy, though? Not so much.

"Nice of you to tell us," she says, almost under her breath.

"We have told you," Steven says. "I've just told you, in't I."

"We ain't told anyone, Amy," I say. "We were waiting till we sign the contract – "

"Oh," says Steven.

"We're signing it tomorrow, Steven, it's okay."

"What about Ste's job? He'll have to get the bus now, won't he, and that's gonna take up half his wages."

"Oi, I am here, you know. I've already thought about it, right, I'm gonna look for a job in town."

"You can't just walk into a new job, it's not that easy."

"Cheers, Amy, thanks for the vote of confidence. I didn't say it's gonna be easy, did I."

"I'm sorry. Sorry, I didn't mean..." She takes a breath and puts a smile on her face. "I'm happy for you. Both: I'm happy for you both."

:::::::

Steven was right about the mothers: there's half a dozen of them hanging around after they've brought their kids. There's white wine being drunk in the kitchen, and the kids haven't eaten yet – they're all out in the garden, either on the slide or playing football – but the party food is being laid into to soak up the booze.

I'm the object of some curiosity. They've seen Steven before, one or two of them, I guess, but I seem to be a well-kept secret, and Amy's in no hurry to make the introductions. Not that I care: these women are just a noise in my ear.

It's only when Amy says to one of them, "You've not met Leah and Lucas's stepdad yet, have you? He's playing football out there – the one in the stripy T-shirt," that I pay attention.

"And sorry," the woman says, "We haven't met either, have we?"

"Brendan," I say. "Leah and Lucas's stepdad."

I scoop some snacks onto a paper plate and go out into the garden, leaving Amy to make whatever explanations she wants.

Steven's playing football with Simon and the kids, and I watch Lucas running around trying to score. It's hard to tell who's on which team, but they're six, seven years old so they're having a blast. After a couple of minutes, Steven comes running up and strips off his sweater. His skin is flushed from the fresh air and exercise.

"Look after that for us. You eating the food already? Greedy guts, it's meant for the kids."

"Ain't just me, Steven. They're like fucking vultures in there, there'll be none left by the time the cocktail party's finished."

He looks round to check that none of the kids heard me swear, then he goes into the kitchen. He's back a moment later.

"Amy's sorting it," he says. "Right, see you in a bit. I've got a football game to win."

"Steven," I say as he starts to go.

"Yeah?"

"These sausage rolls? They're deadly."

"That's good, right?"

"The best."

He grins, and jogs back down the garden. As I sling his sweater over my shoulder I catch his scent on it.

:::::::

Amy's called to the kids to come in and get their tea, and Steven and Simon have herded them inside and into the front room where the food has been laid out now. I loiter in the doorway; I'm not getting involved in the scrum.

Steven is in the thick of it, making sure they all get their fair share, and Amy's doing the same.

She's got her back to me, and I see her glance at Steven, and she freezes. It's only for a second, but it's weird, she's the one still point in the room, and then she turns around and walks over to me, and says, quiet so I'm the only one that hears it: "Out."

I'm in the hallway before I know it, and then she's pushing me out of the front door and I'm so taken by surprise that I let her, and next thing I know we're on the pavement outside.

"What the – ?" What the fuck just happened?

"I _knew_," she says. "I knew I should never have let him take you back. I knew you couldn't change, you're a – "

"_What_?"

"I saw, Brendan. Everyone'll see. I can't believe I let him convince me. 'Brendan's changed, he's had help.' I fell for it, just like he did. And you – " She jabs me in the chest. "You promised me he was safe."

"He _is_ safe. He's safe. I don't know what you're talking about Amy. You had a knock on the head? Someone slipped you something in your chardonnay?"

"You think this is funny? The state of him."

"Listen to me. Are you listening?" I say slowly, "I don't know what you're talking about."

"The bruises."

"What?"

"The bruises on his arm."

"On his..?" Jesus. "Amy, they ain't bruises."

Jesus.

Almost five it was, when I got into bed this morning. Steven woke up, lifted his head and opened his eyes just long enough to look across me at the clock on the radio, then his head dropped back onto the pillow and he burrowed against me, and I curled around him and got his warmth into my bones. And I kissed his shoulder, and I lifted his arm and kissed the crook of his elbow and above it, where the skin is hairless and delicate. And I licked there, didn't I, and I opened my mouth across it and sucked, and he tasted of nothing for the first few minutes until his capillaries gave up and the blood started seeping out of them and spread under the surface of his skin, and then I could taste its iron on my tongue. It was addictive: I looked at the purple marks in the weak morning light, and picked a fresh place and did it again, and put my teeth to it too. The noise he made was half grumbling, half sighing; and then we slept.

"I saw them, Brendan! Or, don't tell me, he walked into a door."

"It ain't bruises, Amy, okay? It's... It's just... It's..."

It's fucking love bites. Jesus.

"Oh." The penny has dropped, along with her jaw. "They're..."

"Yeah."

"Well I'm sorry, I forgot you're _fifteen_."

She's going on the attack again, only this time it's because she's embarrassed. At least we're even on that score.

"The boy wants what he wants, Amy. Who am I to deny him?"

She makes a face.

"Spare me the details," she says.

"You're right, Amy. Other people's love lives are... Take you and your fella, for example – "

"Simon and I are very happy."

"I don't doubt it. He's a good looking lad."

"Your eye's wandering already? You've only been married three months."

I do a quick mental calculation, and I hope I'm right, and if I'm wrong I hope she doesn't check.

"Twelve weeks and one day," I say, "To be accurate. And I wouldn'a married him, would I, if my eye was gonna wander."

"I don't know. Maybe it was to get him where you want him."

"You've lost me. Again."

"You've got him chained to you now, haven't you? And now you're moving him out of his flat where he's got security, his name on the rent book, into this new flat of yours where you can just throw him out when someone else catches your eye. And – " She's on a roll now – "If he gives up his job because you've moved house, he'll have nothing, no independence left at all."

I'm lost for words, and we both stand on the street staring at each other; I think her rant has come as a shock to her as well as to me.

"Do I want him chained to me, or do I want to throw him out?" I say in the end. "I'm confused."

"I don't... I don't think I meant..."

She's run out of steam, and it's my chance to put her in her place. I don't, though. I don't know if I'm tired of the fight, or if it's Steven's disappointment that I'm thinking of if he finds out I let myself get angry. Whatever it is, I bite my tongue and play it cool.

"Look, Amy, he's got security. He got that, marrying me. And our new place, his name's going on the deeds same as mine. I dunno about his job, but it ain't much of a job anyways. He don't like it, does he, so maybe this is the kick up the... the rear he needs to find a better one."

Amy shrugs.

"Maybe."

"Maybe I better get going."

She doesn't argue.

"I'll tell Ste you've gone."

"I'll tell him."

I edge past her, back into the house. Steven's not in the lounge but I go in to say goodbye to Leah and Lucas.

"See you next week," Leah says, and she hugs her arms around my waist.

"See you, sweetheart." She goes back to the table, and I find Lucas and ruffle his hair. "You having a good birthday?"

"Mint."

"Good lad."

I go out to the hallway and Steven's coming down the stairs. He's got his sweater back on, so the incriminating marks are hidden.

"I wondered where you got to," he says. "Everything alright?"

"I'm gonna head to work now, Steven."

"Already? Thought you didn't have to go till – "

"Got paperwork I gotta do, so."

"Least wait till the cake, Brendan."

"Send me a picture. I gotta go. See you tonight." I kiss him quickly on the cheek. "Love you."

"Alright then. Love you too."

I walk past Amy and out to the car.

:::::::

There's a knock on the office door. I tell them to come in, but I whoever it is they probably can't hear me over the music so I get up and open it.

It's Steven.

"I got off the train, right, and I thought, shall I get the bus home or shall I come and cadge a lift home with me bloke, save meself a bus fare," he says, and I pull him into the office, and the music is muffled again when I shut the door on it, and I kiss him. "Your bouncers remembered me, let me in no problem."

"Their job, ain't it, remembering faces. Remembering who's barred."

"I in't barred though."

"Remembering who's the boss's fancy piece. That better?"

"Yeah. Remembering who's allowed to break the no trainers rule an' all."

We kiss again.

"You're gonna have a long wait for your lift home, I'll be hours yet. Get you a taxi if you want?"

"No, you're alright, I'll just have a night out while I'm here, won't I. Might have a bit of a dance."

"Yeah? Let me know when you're planning on dancing, won't you, and I'll come and watch. Could use a laugh."

"Oi, rude. I'm a good dancer, me. We could have a dance together."

"No."

He laughs, then he says, "Amy told me what happened before. Y'know, what she thought was bruises. Did she have a proper go at you?"

"Just a bit. Was like being assaulted by a stick insect, all... pointy."

"I put her straight anyway. She said sorry. She told me to say sorry to you for her."

"Really?"

"Yeah. She's _mortified_, that's what she said. She was only looking out for me, but..."

"I know that. Just wonder if I'm ever not gonna be that guy, that's all."

"You're not that guy. You and me both know it, that's all that matters."

I look at his face, and there isn't an atom of doubt in it.

"Yeah. Yeah, it is." I hold his chin for a second, brush my thumb across his lip. "Told her it was you, by the way."

"What was me?"

"That likes the bites."

"Oh right, cheers, Brendan. Amy's gonna think I'm a right perv now." He pauses. "I do, though, to be fair. I like..."

"What?"

"I like seeing them, like, when I'm on me own. The bites and that. Specially on me thighs, here." He touches the insides of his thighs with both hands.

"Jesus, Steven. You're making me horny."

He does the kind of hidden smile he does when he's trying not to smile because he thinks serious is sexier.

"You're always horny," he says.

"I'm at work."

"So?"

"So I gotta work. Meant to be covering the bar right about now."

"Later, then. Oh, I brought you a bit of the cake, d'you wanna have it now?"

"No. You have it, yeah?"

"No, I had some. It's for you. It's nice, go on, I bet you in't had anything all day."

"Don't want it. Don't like cake."

"Yeah you do, you liar."

"I don't like birthday cake, okay?"

"That's stupid, Bren. It's just the same as normal cake."

"No it ain't. It's... I dunno, it's got holes in where the candles were. You see them, you know it's birthday cake, it's..."

I glance at Steven and he's looking at me carefully.

"It's okay. I told Leah I'd bring it for you, and I did. You don't have to eat it, she won't know."

"Anyhow, I had something to eat at the party, didn't I."

"Yeah, well, we'll have to get something on our way home. You can't just live on me finger-food."

"Your what?"

"Finger... food."

"You're a filthy wee bastard, Steven. Come on, I'll get you a drink."

:::::::

He's yawning by the time the club closes, but he perks up in the car and we take a diversion to the twenty-four hour McDonalds, and he hugs the paper bags of warm containers on his lap till we get home.

We eat on the couch. He hands over his gherkins: he reckons they're evil. I crunch them in his ear and get an elbow in the ribs for it.

I finish my fries and nick some of his, but he drowns the rest in ketchup so I don't grab any more.

He gets it down his chin, and I lick it off.

"Ta."

"Well it was gonna drip on your baby blue jumper, so."

He kisses me.

"You've got salt on your moustache."

"Yeah, well you've got a gob full of chips but you don't hear me complaining."

"I weren't complaining. Wouldn't complain about a bit of salt, would I. If I was gonna complain, I would'a complained about your gherkin breath."

"Fuck off. You got no taste."

"I'm a chef!"

I finish my burger, take his off him and push him down on the couch. He starts unbuttoning my shirt but then his arm flops back and he lies there letting me do all the work.

"Lazy little..."

"I'm tired, aren't I." He rouses himself to loop his arms loosely around my neck.

"You're ten years younger than me, what you tired for?"

"I been playing football all afternoon, in't I."

"Too tired to fuck, are you?"

"Too tired to fight you off," he says, and his arms tighten to pull me to his mouth, and the kiss I get from him is slack-jawed and soft-tongued.

"I've to carry you to bed now, have I?"

He laughs, not his usual laugh but softer. I think he's a bit drunk.

"No," he says. "We can do it here."

"Lube's in the bedroom." Truth is, I like my comfort these days, and this couch is lumpy.

"Okay," he says.

I stand up and hold out my hands and he grips them, and I pull him to his feet then I hoist him over my shoulder. I take him to the bedroom and dump him on the bed. He makes a half-arsed attempt to get out of his jeans but gives up with one foot still caught up in them.

"What am I, your valet?" I say, and I get the rest of his clothes off him.

He watches me as I finish getting undressed.

He's on top of the cover. I yank it out from under him and get in bed and cover us both over, then I hook his arm up and there's enough light coming in through the open door from the hallway to let me examine the dark smudges I made on his skin. I smooth my thumb across them. They're fresh and vivid like a brand.

He's drifting, but my hand between his thighs and two fingers (well lubricated) easing into him, and he's back in the room. I'm propped on one elbow watching his face as I massage inside him. His eyes are closed but he's present, every sensation registering in frowns and twitches and bitten lips. He's breathing out words – _Fuck... God... Fuck_ – and when I press his prostate with my fingertips, his words lose their consonants and they're just noises now, bypassing the civilised part of his brain. I look at him, and I think it's ridiculous that this world has a creature like him in it.

The cover moves, and I realise he's giving himself a tug.

"Oi." I pull my fingers out and his eyes snap open. "You fucking nympho. Am I gonna get some, or am I just gonna watch you getting off?"

"You watching me?"

"You know I'm watching you."

"Pervert."

He turns towards me onto his side and gets hold of my cock. I lie back. He squeezes near the head, and I can feel his knuckles against my belly. I think I groan. Then he shoves the cover back and goes down on me, weighing my balls in his hand, rubbing a thumb up and down the underside of my shaft, and sucking, sucking. I come against the roof of his mouth. I feel my cum flooding around my tip, but when I'm out from between his lips I'm clean.

I pull him up, my hands slipping in the sweat of his pits, and we kiss. He moves to kneel with his knees under my arms, and I finger his hole again and milk his dick with my hand till a froth of cum shows in his slit and I catch it in my mouth, spurt after spurt of it.

He flops down beside me. He's panting, and when he turns his head and we look at each other his smile is open-mouthed and his eyes shine.

:::::::

Steven is in a suit. It's an old one, one he's probably worn for funerals and court appearances: a cheap one, not like that wedding suit of his which cost me an arm and a leg, but he looks the business.

"If you sign just there, Mr Brady, where it says _purchaser one_," the solicitor says, and I sign my name. "Thank you. And now Mr Hay, your signature next to _purchaser two_."

The last time I sat next to Steven and watched him sign his name, it was in the wedding register. Maybe he's remembering the same thing too, because he looks at me and his eyes smile.

"That it?" I ask.

"That's it. We'll exchange contracts this afternoon, and once we do that and hand over the deposit, the contract is binding on both sides, which means you need to be a hundred per cent sure you'll have the funds available to complete the purchase."

"We will, soon as the other place is sold in a coupl'a weeks."

"Then we can move in?" Steven says.

"Then we can move in."

"Can't wait."

When we leave the solicitors, Steven is quiet.

"You okay, Steven?" I'm thinking, is he having second thoughts? My gut twists.

"It's just..." he says. "You, me, Leah and Lucas. You said it, remember? You said you was gonna give us a future, and it's like... It's like, this is what you promised. It's this, Brendan. It's now."


	5. Chapter 5

My boy Steven, he's poorly. I've known it for a few days: he's been quiet, not full of beans like he normally is. Irritable, a bit. Lethargic. And the last couple of nights he's not woken up when I've got in from work, not even when I've got into bed and worked my arm around his shoulders. And his breathing's different. Usually I have to strain my ears to hear him breathing when he's sleeping deeply, but last night I heard him from the doorway when I got home.

He's said he's fine, but he's not.

He went to work this morning even though I told him not to. I was still asleep when he came into the bedroom to tell me he was going, and his voice when he woke me didn't even sound like him, and when I looked at him he had dark rings under his eyes. I told him, call in sick, but he wouldn't have it. He only gets paid for the hours he works and I think it's in his head that he's not pulling his weight money-wise, since Amy made a crack the other weekend about me holding the purse strings. I've told him enough times, it's only money; he's got his pride though.

I've been to the gym and when I get home he's home too, sat on the couch with a throw wrapped around him, looking sorry for himself.

"Boss sent me home," he says. "Didn't want me spreading germs in the kitchen, did he."

"I told you you shouldn'a gone in, didn't I?"

I sit down next to him and go to kiss him but he shakes his head.

"You'll catch it," he says.

"I would'a caught it before now, Steven. You're contagious before you know you've got it, that's how viruses spread, ain't it."

"Yeah, but kissing's not nice when you're all snotty anyway, is it."

"Okay." I kiss his forehead instead, and then feel it with my hand. "You got a temperature, feels like."

"Our Lucas had a temperature, d'you remember? At the weekend. That'll be when I got it."

"Yeah. Kids, they get things all the time. You wanna go to bed?"

"No, I don't feel well, do I."

"I mean to _sleep_, Steven." Jesus.

"Oh. No, I'll stay here, watch the telly and that. You feel worse if you go to bed in the day, don't you."

"Your throat sore? It sounds it."

"Yeah." He swallows painfully.

He looks so abjectly miserable that I want to laugh. I don't laugh, obviously: I know what side my bread is buttered.

What do you do when someone's got a cold or a bug or whatever he's gone and caught? I try and remember when my boys weren't well. You give them fluids, I think. And food. Or are you not meant to give them food? Fuck, I don't know, but I do know Steven's been off his food, and he's not a man who's got reserves of fat to draw on.

"You had anything today, Steven?"

"Had some paracetamol when I got home."

"I meant, to eat. You had anything to eat?" I know he didn't have breakfast before he left this morning because I asked him and he said he would get something at work, but I bet he didn't.

"In't hungry."

"You gotta eat something, you're a bag of bones as it is."

"I'm not."

"I'll get you something." I stand and head for the kitchen.

"You've gotta go to work."

"I've got time. I'll get you some... some soup, yeah?" Yeah, that's what you give someone who's sick: soup. "Or... Eggs. Want me to do you some eggs?"

I'm coming to the end of my repertoire, and he's wrinkling his nose still.

"I don't want nothing. I'll do meself some soup maybe later, alright?"

"At least have something to drink before I go, or I'm gonna... D'you want a whiskey? Do you good."

"No."

"Cuppa tea then? Come on, Steven."

"Don't want tea. Can I have a Ribena?"

"Ribena?"

"Ribena."

"Okay."

"Hot."

"Hot Ribena?"

"Yeah."

"Hot Ribena. Good."

"And a biscuit."

"And a biscuit," I say, and go and put the kettle on.

We've got Ribena, the kids drink it sometimes. We've got biscuits, and I take them in to Steven while I'm waiting for the kettle.

"I said _a_ biscuit," he says, like he thinks I'm going to force-feed him. "Not the whole jar."

"I brought the barrel so's you can have more later if you want."

"Barrel? Barrel's for beer."

"It's a biscuit barrel. That's what it's called." I bet the Yank called it a _cookie jar_.

"It sounds funny," Steven says, and it's the first time I've seen him smile today.

"Shut up and eat your biscuit."

I make him his Ribena and bring it to him, then I go and get changed for work. When I come back, he's dipping a custard cream into his mug.

"Hurts me throat if I don't dunk it," he says.

I love him.

"You're gonna be okay on your own, yeah? Call me if you need me, I can be home in twenty minutes."

"I've just got a cold, Brendan, stop fussing. I'm just gonna sit here, in't I, I'm not doing anything dangerous."

"Yeah. So I'll see you tonight then. You got your phone by you? Okay." I kiss the top of his head. "Love you."

"Love you too," he says with what's left of his voice.

:::::::

When I get home in the early hours I expect to find him in bed, but the lights are still on and I can hear the telly as I come through the front door.

He's fast asleep where I left him this afternoon, only lying on the couch instead of sitting, and he's in pyjamas and dressing gown. There's a half-finished cup of soup (cold) on the coffee table.

I turn off the television.

I can't leave him here all night. It's no good, he'll be all aches and pains tomorrow from lying cramped up like this, so I squat down in front of him and I repeat his name quietly until he comes to.

"You're back," he says.

"Let's get you to bed, yeah?"

He sits up and stretches stiffly, and I hear his shoulder crack.

"Need the loo," he says.

I go into the bathroom with him and take a shower while he's in there. He's brushing his teeth when I finish, holding on to the edge of the basin.

I go and make the bed, and he follows me in after a minute and sits on the edge.

"Sorry I'm like this," he says.

I lift his chin.

"You no better, no?"

"Dunno. I'm just tired now."

"Okay. Be better in the morning maybe. Come on, get into bed."

I put on the dressing gown when he takes it off, and go and make myself a sandwich. By the time I come back he's asleep.

:::::::

He's still the same in the morning, but by the time I leave for work in the afternoon he's more himself: some light is coming back into his eyes, and he's talking more – enough to remind me how much I'm used to his chatter, and how much I'm missing it.

I stand in the bedroom doorway when I get home, and his breathing sounds how it usually sounds when he's asleep, so quiet it's barely audible.

I close the door and go to the kitchen. There's two or three days' worth of mugs and glasses and plates in the sink and on the side. There's no dinner made for me, obviously, and when I go to make myself something, there's only a few slices of bread left and they feel stale. I think maybe I'll make do with a bowl of cereal but there's not enough milk, so I toast the bread and stand and eat it, and wash it down with a whiskey, and think about how I don't notice the half of what he does for me. For us.

When I go to bed he wakes up and cuddles up. His temperature's gone down.

"You feeling better?"

"Yeah, think so. Probably go back to work tomorrow."

"See how you go, yeah?"

:::::::

I'm awake before him in the morning, and I get in the car and go and get some shopping, which is weird. Usually he goes to the supermarket, or we go together. Anyhow, I get anything I remember we're out of, and I'm back before he wakes up.

He really is better today. He's shaken it off, pretty much: he's a bit red-nosed and still sniffing, but he has a shower and when he comes to find me after he's got dressed he's smiling and giving me a hard time about the state of the kitchen.

"You could'a done the washing-up at least," he says.

"I was gonna. I'll do it today."

"Won't have to for much longer, we'll have a dishwasher, won't we."

"Will we?"

"Yeah, there's one in the new place, Brendan."

"Didn't notice."

"That's cos you didn't hardly look. But they said, didn't they, everything that was there was, like, included."

"Yep. So we got a dishwasher? You can throw away the Marigolds then, Steven. Shame, they kinda suit you."

"Funny."

There's a clear sunlight coming through the kitchen window, and Steven's skin looks translucent and taut over the sharp angles of his cheekbones. He hasn't shaved for a couple of days, so there's stubble shading his top lip and the hollows of his cheeks. His hair is unstyled, unruly and soft. He looks fragile and other-worldy, and in my arms he feels breakable, like his bones are unprotected.

I kiss his neck as I hold him; it's downy against my lips, and warm.

"Let's get you some breakfast," I say, and I tighten my hold on him. "You need some food inside you. Jesus."

"Alright." His hand rests lightly on the back of my neck, his head on my shoulder. "You'll have to let go of me first though, Brendan."

He's intending to ring his boss and say he'll be there for the afternoon shift, until I mention that the beach house is being auctioned today.

"We'll have the money in a couple of days, then the solicitors do their thing, you know, hand it over to the fella we're buying the flat off."

"And that's when we move in?"

"Yeah. Well, when we're ready. We gotta pack up this place, whatever we're taking with us."

"That won't take long. It better not anyway, we're s'posed to be out of here by the twenty-ninth."

"Shouldn't be a problem, long as my nana's place sells."

He knows I'm watching that he eats his cereal, and there's a bit of pushing it around the bowl with his spoon but he's doing as well as he can with it.

"Are you going today?" he asks.

"To the auction? No. Don't need to be there, do I. Doesn't even start till two or something, might be hours by the time our one comes up. I got meetings at work anyway, so."

"Can I go?"

"Anyone can go. Thought you were going to work, though."

"I could say I'm still ill. I never seen an auction before. What d'you reckon?"

"Go, if you wanna go. Long as you sit on your hands."

"What? How d'you mean?"

"You just don't wanna catch the auctioneer's eye, do you, case he thinks you're making a bid. Last thing I want's a phone call saying you've bought a bungalow in Bootle."

"Is that what could happen?" His eyes are wide with pre-emptive panic.

I laugh.

"You'll be alright, long as you don't give him a wink. I'll give you a lift there if you like, on my way to work."

"Better ring me boss then, tell him I'm having another day."

He goes out of the room to make the call, but I listen. He's a convincing liar, Steven is: by the time he's explained in a croaky voice how he's not better yet but he's determined – hero that he is – to make it in to work tomorrow, I'm thinking even I might fall for it.

:::::::

I'm at the club, and I get a phone call from a girl from the auction house. She says the sale has been successful, we got forty grand above the reserve price and they'll be sending the details over to my solicitor. She tells me the buyer is known to them, it's a developer that does _sensitive restorations_ of _character properties_, so she's sure the ultimate buyer will love the house – as if she's softening the blow for me of parting with my old family cottage; as if I give a fuck what they do with that god-forsaken place.

Ten minutes later, Steven shows up. We're not open yet but I answer the door thinking it's maybe one of the suppliers even though my meeting with them is already over, so seeing him here is what you might call a pleasant surprise.

"Guess what?" he says.

"What?"

"It got sold, right, and the bloke paid forty thousand pounds more than the whatsit price."

"The reserve?"

"Yeah, the reserve. Forty thousand pounds more than the reserve price, Brendan."

"Wow. That is good news, Steven." I hold his face and kiss him. His lips are dry and flaky; he must have got dehydrated when he was ill, I guess. Not enough Ribena.

"Thought you'd wanna know," he says.

"Thank you for telling me."

"It was dead exciting, the auction. Dead fast. But I couldn'a, like, bidded by mistake, Bren, cos they gave out these things with numbers on you had to wave if you was bidding, so the auction bloke would know, wouldn't he, if you was just scratching your ear or something."

"That right? Didn't know, did I."

"Didn't you? I thought you was winding me up."

"Would I?"

"Yeah, you would."

"Yeah, I would. Drive you home if you want? I got time before it starts getting busy here."

"No, you're alright. Gonna get a bit of shopping, you forgot half of it. I'll get the bus after."

:::::::

He doesn't tell me till the next day, he's lost his job.

"You back at work today, then?" I've asked him, and he's looked shifty, and he's not touched his breakfast. "Steven?"

"I ain't going."

"Why? Not feeling worse again, are you?"

"No. I ain't going back ever, alright? Misery-guts saw me getting off the bus yesterday, didn't he, so he knew I weren't sick no more."

"And he sacked you? He can't just sack you, Steven, there's processes, there's – "

"He can though, cos I'm just a casual. Was."

"That ain't the point, Steven. The fuck he think he is, treating you like that? You're a good worker, you got kids to support... I'm gonna – "

"No! No, you're not gonna do nothing, right." He's defensive, and he's not looking me in the eye. "It's not like you never sacked me, is it, when I had kids to support and I hadn't even done nothing wrong."

"Fucksake, Steven."

"Just saying."

"This why you pretended you were asleep last night, was it, cos you didn't wanna tell me?"

"I weren't pretending. But maybe, yeah, I didn't wanna tell you cos... cos he didn't sack me, did he. Right, he gave me a warning, and I..."

"What?"

"I told him he could stick his poxy job."

I'm stinging from his reminder of what a bastard I was to him, and it makes me sting him back.

"Great reference he's gonna give you, then, ain't he. Nice move there, mate."

"What, you think I don't know that? Yeah, I know, I've fucked up. You don't have to tell me."

He strops off to the bedroom.

Fuck. I don't even know why we're fighting. Far as I'm concerned, he doesn't need to go out to work at all; as far as I'm concerned he only needs to go to work if it makes him happy, and that job never did.

I follow him.

"Look, Steven – " I stop and stare; he's there in just his tracksuit bottoms. "What you doing?"

"Getting changed. Can't go round looking for jobs in me trackies, can I, cos they're gonna think I'm just some scally on the dole. They'll prob'ly think it anyway, cos I got no references, I got fuck all qualifications, I'm just – "

"Leave it for today, yeah? Leave it till we've moved, okay, then you can look properly, find something you wanna do when you've calmed down. I got enough money for the both of us – for all of us, us and the kids."

"I in't living off'a you, Brendan."

"I know. Just for now though, okay? We got a lot to do, sorting out this place, getting stuff for the new place. Decorating the kids' room. Maybe this is a blessing in disguise, you know?" I risk moving towards him. "You were gonna leave that job anyway, weren't you, once you found a new one in town. So it's not happened how we planned it, but it's gonna be okay."

He's stopped looking for something to wear, and he's looking at me.

"I've gotta get a job though."

"I know, okay?"

"I mean it, Bren, even if I don't look for a job till after we're in the new flat, right, I'm gonna... I've gotta pay my way."

"Okay."

"I mean it," he says again.

"I said okay didn't I? Jesus." I pause and take in the sight of him. "Jesus, Steven, you're skin and bone."

He looks down at himself, and reaches for the T-shirt he's taken off.

"Shut up. Been off me food, in't I." He looks embarrassed.

"Only for a few days though, and you look like you'd snap if – "

"Can't help it." He's fumbling with the shirt, turning it the right way out and trying to find the armholes.

"Come here then."

"So you can tell me how skinny I am? No."

So I go to him, and I take the T-shirt from him and drop it on the floor, and I stroke my knuckles down his breastbone and into the hollow triangle below his ribs where his diaphragm dips as he breathes, and down his belly to his waistband.

"Jesus."

I look at his face: his jaw is set.

"Surprised you wanna touch me," he says.

It's all wrong: much thinner and he'd be on the danger list, but god help me, I can't take my eyes off him.

"_Touch_ you? I wanna fuck you, you skinny bitch."

There's a flicker of surprise in his eyes, a fractional move towards me, a hesitation.

"An't you got a job to go to?" he asks.

"Got a coupl'a hours."

And then his hands are on my shoulders and my arms are tight around him and I think his feet leave the floor. We've not done anything since he got ill, and now there's a scramble to get at each other's flesh. Skin, I should say: the boy's got no flesh to get at.

Splayed out on his back in the middle of the bed, he's irresistible. I'm hungry for him now and I'm in a hurry, and I slick him with lube and slide a finger in through it, and he's as soft and smooth on the inside as he is on the outside. His ring seizes tight as my finger comes out, then spreads to take the head of my cock. I've gone too fast though, I've not let him get the tilt of his pelvis right, and I feel my thrust bruise him.

"Ow," he says, "Wait wait wait," and I've already pulled out of him.

"I hurt you?"

"I weren't ready, I'm okay now." He kisses me.

"You up for this, Steven? You've not been well, maybe we didn't ought'a be – "

"You're joking, right?" He kisses me again, and then I kiss his cheek and the side of his neck, and he says in a whisper that I feel in my ear, "But gentle... Pretend... pretend it's the first time."

His words make my blood rush.

When I look at his face he looks up at me through his eyelashes, and the tip of his tongue appears for half a second between his lips.

I kiss him. _Gentle_.

"Like that?"

"Yeah."

I kiss along his jaw. I run my tongue along his clavicles – the left one and the right one – and then I kiss down his sternum. I lift his arm and run my lips along his humerus from shoulder to elbow, and I feel his radius and ulna twist around each other as I turn his wrist. I hold his femurs and lick the length of his boner from balls to tip.

All the while his hands are on me, stroking my shoulders, grasping my hair, curling around my biceps, showing me where he wants me to linger and when he wants me to move on.

I kiss his mouth and I say, "Wanna try it? See if you like it?"

He smiles, "Go on then," and he bends his legs up from the hips – right up – and around me, and this time when I enter him he takes me easily.

"You sure you ain't done this before?"

His laugh is delicious, breathy with a catch in his throat.

"No, never, me," he says.

I go slow till his hands on my arse tell me to go fast, and then his head snaps back on the pillow, mouth open. His Adam's apple is vibrating against my tongue with his noise, and it's so sharp it could slice its way through his throat from the inside, and if it did I'd suck the open wound.

He slides his hand between us, and the movement of his hand on his dick is out of sync with my rhythm at first. I don't know which of us compromises, but we get in time with each other, and he looks at me like he's looking into me. I feel like I'm filling him. I feel like my cum fills him, deep in him, my DNA absorbed in his body. That's what it feels like to me.

We clean up, and then we lie face to face.

"You better not drop them wipes on the floor in our new place," Steven says. "We gotta keep the carpet nice."

"No, it's wood floors."

"No, it's wood floors everywhere else but it's carpet in our bedroom. Dark blue carpet. How can you not know that? You're spending all that money and you didn't hardly look at it."

"You liked it though, so." I reach for his leg and pull it across my hip, and stroke it. "Why are your legs so fucking hairy? You're like a... a whaddya call it?"

"What?"

"Like the fella in the wardrobe thing. Narnia. Body of a man – a scrawny-arse man in your case – "

"Shut up."

"... And the legs of a... I dunno, some kinda animal."

"Oh yeah, I know what you mean. Our Leah's got it, only she got scared watching. I've watched it with our Peri though, it's good. Leah might like it now she's older."

"He had horns though, didn't he. A faun, that's what he was. You got horns?" I comb my fingers through his hair.

"I file them down, don't I, else people stare."

"Makes sense."

We kiss.

"I wouldn'a thought it was your sort'a film," he says.

"Ain't seen the film. Read the book though, when I was a kid. Coupl'a times." I remember getting caught up in it, this world where there was another way out of your bedroom if your way to the door was barred. "Irish writer, see."

"You know what you're like? You're like that Aslan."

"Don't think so, Steven, it's an allegory – "

"No, it's a lion."

"Yeah, it's a lion. But it's also, it's an... it's meant to be Jesus Christ, you know, getting betrayed and put to death, then getting resurrected."

"I thought it was just about animals and that. That's what I meant anyway, right, you're like a lion, in't you. You know, after we do it – like now – you're all sort of satisfied, you are, and sleepy, like a lion when he's killed something and ate it. An reindeer or something."

"A _reindeer_?"

"Yeah. What? It's all snowy where he is, innit, like the North Pole."

"Oh, we're still in Narnia are we?"

"Yeah. Why, where are you?"

"The Serengeti." I smile at his frown, and smooth it with my thumb. "You're right though, Narnia's better: Irishmen ain't good in the sun."

"Or Irish lions."

"Specially Irish lions."

"That's what you're like, anyway, Brendan. All..." He searches for the right word. "_Content_, like if you've had a reindeer for breakfast."

"Or a faun."

Steven laughs, "Yeah." He thinks for a moment. "I didn't know it was about Jesus."

"And I ain't no Jesus."

"You did come back though, Brendan, after everyone thought you'd gone for ever." He looks serious, then he smiles again and says, "Plus you had a beard."

"You're a funny little fucker, you know that?"

He touches my face.

"You've got white hairs in your moustache."

"I know."

"I love you so much it hurts."

"I know." I kiss him. "I gotta go to work."

"I know."

:::::::

The money from the sale of the holiday house has come through, quicker than I expected, and as soon as it's in the bank I transfer over to my solicitor's account the balance of the money for the flat.

Steven's been cracking on with packing up the old place. A lot of stuff we're going to leave behind – we're going to furnish the new place pretty much from scratch, even if it means living without much in the way of furniture until we're sorted. We don't need much, do we. The kitchen's well equipped according to Steven, and we're taking his telly, and there's a sofa that comes with the flat, and there's that king size bed there waiting for us. That's the essentials.

We're at home having an argument about one thing or another when the solicitor calls.

"Just to let you know," he says, "We completed your purchase at two o'clock this afternoon, and I've told the agents they can release the keys to you. Congratulations, Mr Brady."

"Cheers. That's... Thanks, that's good news."

"We'll put it in writing – alright to write to you at the new address?"

"Yeah. We'll be moving in, soon as."

I can see from Steven's face that he's got the gist, and as soon as I end the call he asks me, "Is that it? Is it ours now?"

"It's ours. Wanna drive up now, get the keys?"

"Yeah," he says, and he's in my arms, and it's only a few days since he started eating normally again but he feels more substantial to me already; he feels strong.

We drive into Chester and pick up the keys from the estate agents, then we park up at the flats and work out which key fits the door to the building. When we get upstairs to our own front door it's the same routine, trying the keys until we get both locks open.

We look at each other.

"After you, Steven."

I follow him in. Our footsteps sound loud on the floorboards because there's nothing much in there to absorb the noise, and the place feels cold with the blinds all closed and no heating on.

"Shall we let some air in?" he says.

He goes to the blind that's masking the window which opens onto the narrow balcony, and I watch him fiddling with the mechanism until he figures out how it works; and then he opens it, and the room fills with light.


	6. Chapter 6

There's a couple of days between getting the keys to our new place and the deadline for moving out of the old one, and it's been a rush in the end after a long time when it felt like we'd have been tempting fate if we'd got too much into preparing for the move. I don't know about Steven, but I was expecting last minute hitches before the money came through and the new flat was signed over to us; because if life has taught me one thing, it's that shit happens. So when shit didn't happen I was unprepared.

Still, I've borrowed a van from one of the club's suppliers, and I've sorted some time off work over the next few days – I'll still be going in, just not for the usual hours – and we've cancelled the kids coming this weekend because there's too much needs doing.

I've taken a van load of stuff to the dump, and when we take stock of what's actually coming with us to the new place, it's a shock how little there is. There's the kids' things mainly, and the television, Steven's Xbox and so on; there's our clothes; there's bits and pieces from the kitchen. But I've not accumulated much in the way of possessions in the seven and a half months I've been out, and Steven's wanting to throw his things out much more than he's wanting to keep them. We're both travelling light, you might say. Plus most of the furniture belongs to the landlord anyhow, so even if we wanted to furnish our place with it – which we don't, because it's fucking awful – we wouldn't be able to.

So the day before we pack up the last of our things and leave, we have this conversation about what we're going to want to buy for after we move in, and Steven sits there and makes a list while we're taking a lunch break, eating a lunch he's made out of things from the fridge that need using up.

"A chest of drawers," I say. "Bedside cabinets. Bedside lamps."

"Rugs, we need, don't we, cos of whoever's downstairs, we don't want them complaining about the kids making a noise running around on them wood floors."

"We gotta get sheets, ain't we, you know: a king size duvet. Fuck, this is good, Steven." It's just vegetables he's made to go with some pasta, but there's chilli and garlic and some kind of herbs in it, and you wouldn't find anything better in a restaurant. "Little domestic goddess, ain't you."

"Ta. Main thing is the bunk beds for the kids, or they'll have nowhere to sleep, will they. Oi, Brendan, a goddess is a girl, bloody cheek. I've looked online, they've got them in Ikea, wood ones. You've got to buy the mattresses separate, but... D'you think they'll fit in that van?"

"Domestic _god_, then. Dunno. Yeah, probably. But... you looked anywhere else, Steven? Ikea's all flatpacks and – "

"It's the cheapest, innit."

"I'd sooner pay the extra and get the beds turn up as beds, y'know, not a pile of cardboard boxes full of planks and screws, and us having to do their fucking job putting it all together."

"You in't paying though."

"We got the money, Steven, we don't have to go for the cheap stuff."

"_I've_ got the money, alright? I can buy me own kids their beds, yeah, if we 'go for the cheap stuff.'"

"I'm saying, we don't have to, do we?"

He throws his fork down onto his plate.

He's got money, but all it is is the wages he was owed after he quit his job. He went back there to ask his boss for it, after I told him to: I told him he was entitled, and not to let them get away without paying him. Funny thing was, he got offered his job back but soon as the guy told him he hoped he'd learnt his lesson, Steven got fired up again and told him (again) where to stick it just as soon as he had the cash in his hand.

"I'm buying them, right?" he says.

"Let me. Let me take care of it, Steven, yeah? There's two and a half years when I should'a been here, taking care of you and Leah and Lucas, and I gotta... I just gotta make up for it. For chrissake, a few hundred quid more is neither here not there."

"Look, Brendan, right, I get it. I do get it. But there's loads of things we're gonna need to buy for the flat, in't there, and that's gonna be down to you cos I can't afford it – can't afford anything, can I, till I get another job. But them beds for me kids, I'm sorry, but they're the one thing I can buy and I'm buying them. End of."

I clear my throat.

"We got any more of this?"

"No. Finish mine if you want."

"No, you get that down you, Steven, come on."

"I've had enough. It's going in the bin if you don't wannit, so you might as well."

We swap plates, and I finish his pasta.

"Go and get your money, Steven, if we're going."

:::::::

So we've been to Ikea.

Yeah. Ikea, we've been to. Picked up some things that caught Steven's eye for the new kitchen while we were there, and some things for the kids' room, and Steven handed over his last two or three hundred quid for a make-your-own-bunk-beds kit and a couple of mattresses. It just about fit in the van, and we took it round to the new place, and by the time we'd carried it up all the stairs to the second floor – five trips, it took – we were both not talking to each other except in curses.

I go to work in the evening, leaving Steven to carry on packing and cleaning at the old place, and when I get home he's still up and surrounded by boxes, and the place smells of bleach and polish.

"I've cleaned the shower but you can have a bath if you want," he says.

He's still in a mood.

"You alright?"

"I haven't stopped since you went out."

"Looks like you've done everything."

"Yeah it does, dun't it."

I leave him to his martyrdom and run my bath. He must have packed away everything because all that's left out is a toothbrush and toothpaste, a bar of soap, a flannel and a towel. I lie back and let the water soothe my aching muscles for a few minutes, and then I realise that I've left the soap over on the basin. Fuck. I'm debating getting out to get it or doing without, when Steven comes in.

"Pass the soap, will you?"

He gets it for me and then he strips off without ceremony and steps into the bath.

"Move up, then."

He sits down with his back towards me, and I fold my arms around his belly as he leans against me.

"We okay?" I ask, and I kiss the side of his neck.

"We better had be, or what we doing buying that flat?" He's quiet for a minute, washing himself with the flannel, and then he says, "I think everything's done now. I reckon we can do it in one trip tomorrow, there's not much left to take."

"Get started first thing, then, yeah?"

"Yeah. We'll have to get breakfast on the way. I've done you a sandwich for tonight, but that's all, that's all the food left over except tins and stuff that I've packed, and don't ask me to find which box they're in. We've got enough milk for a cuppa but that's it."

"You packed my Jameson's away?"

"No. I knew you'd want one, didn't I."

I wash his back for him.

So my last meal in this old flat – _our_ last meal, since the bread hadn't run out until he'd made enough for two hungry men – is a pile of jam sandwiches. He has a whiskey with me even though he doesn't much like it, and we touch glasses and drink to us; and when we go to bed, we sleep.

:::::::

The van is loaded. I take out the rubbish while Steven does a last check to make sure we haven't forgotten anything, and then we leave our keys on the coffee table and go.

Steven doesn't look back as we drive off, which surprises me. I glance at him to check he's okay, and he grins at me and I smile back, and the fella whose van I've borrowed must like old songs because when Steven puts the radio on, Frank Sinatra is asking, _So tell me why should it be true, that I get a kick out of you? _

We stop for petrol, and Steven goes into the shop and gets us some coffees and sandwiches, and we're only a few minutes from our new flat but we park up and have our breakfast because we're both starving.

"You know what we should'a got when we was shopping? That we need, like, today?"

"What's that?" I ask through a mouthful of tuna mayo. "Did you have to get brown bread? It's like horse food."

"They didn't have white. Anyway it's good for you, wholemeal, and since when do horses eat tuna? We've got to get a duvet, in't we, and sheets and that, cos our double one's gonna be too small for our new bed. It's on the list but we didn't get it."

"Seahorses. We'll unload this lot, then we can go out and get what we need, okay? Plenty of shops in Chester."

:::::::

We've emptied the van and lugged everything up to the flat, and kind of put all the boxes and bags in the appropriate rooms. It's a small flat but even with all our worldly goods in it, it doesn't feel cramped.

The boxes containing the parts of the kids' bunks lean against a wall ominously: that job can wait for now, because it's Friday today and Leah and Lucas won't be coming until next Saturday.

We unpack what we can. Our suits are on their own hangers so they go in the built-in wardrobe, but we haven't got any more hangers and we've got no drawers so the rest of our clothes have to stay in the black bin bags we've brought them in. The kitchen looks clean but he cleans it anyway, and puts away our few plates and cups and glasses (we've only brought the ones that weren't chipped) and plugs in the kettle and the toaster. I set up the telly, although we've got nothing to stand it on so it's on the floor at the moment.

Steven's been adding to his list of things we need to get, and I take a look at it.

_Chest of draws_

_Bed Side Cabnits_

_rugs_

_Bed covers_

_paint etc_

_bed side lamps_

_Food!_

_TV Stand_

_throw_

_haners_

"What's 'paint etcetera', Steven?"

"Gonna decorate the kids' room. I know you said the white walls is fine, and it is, right, for the rest of the flat, but I wanna do their room. So I need paint and dust sheets and brushes and a roller, don't I."

"And you're gonna do it this week, are you?"

"Yeah. Makes sense if I do it before the bunks are in the way. Why, d'you think I can't do it?"

"No, I'm looking forward to it." I get him by the hips and drag him into my arms against his will. "Just wanna see you in your overalls, don't I."

He laughs, and whispers into my ear, "Weirdo," and I let go of him and give his backside a slap and say, "Come on, we got shopping to do."

:::::::

The department store is the kind of place that sells furniture that's already been made into furniture before it gets to your house. After the fuss about the kids beds, Steven doesn't seem to mind me getting out my credit card to pay for the rest of the things we need for our new home; I guess it was the principle, the thing he needed to do.

We're looking at bedside cabinets.

"What if we get them ones with all the drawers, instead of the little cupboardy ones, Brendan? Cos if we get one of them each, then we don't need to get a chest of drawers, do we, it'll save space." Then he says to the salesman, "Cos we got this massive bed, right, so there's not much room for anything else."

I look at the floor.

"Okay, we'll get the bedside chests then. Two of them. Good, okay."

We find a unit for the TV, and then we look for a rug for the living room, and the sales guy is as camp as Christmas and he's all, "So what colour is your sofa, may I ask?" and I say it's grey, and he says, "Is that charcoal?" and shows us a rug that's striped _charcoal_ and blue, and Steven spots a throw that's the same shade of blue, so that's that. It takes longer for him to choose a rug for the children.

"You getting fed up?" Steven asks. "We just better get the bedding, then, cos that's what we came out for, innit."

We get two lots ("One on, one in the wash," he says) and then we remember we want hangers but we neither of us even know what department we'd find them in, so we decide it can wait, and we head back. The cabinets are being delivered in a few days but we take everything else in the van, and we scale the stairs up to the flat another two or three times. We lay the rug in the living room and he throws the throw over the sofa, and fair play, it looks good.

My car is parked at the club. I leave him getting on with things and I go over there; it's five minutes' walk – less, even – and I realise what I'm looking forward to is for Steven to be able to drop by to see me at work whenever he wants. I used to think about that when I was inside. I used to think about a lot of things, but the times when he was always a short walk away, when I'd be at Chez Chez and I'd look up and see him walk in: when I thought about those times, it was like it was farther away than the stars through the bars in my window.

I go into the club, check that everything's running fine without me, tell them I'll be back tomorrow night. Then I get in the car and drive back to the flats. I press the intercom to get Steven to come down because I can't face the stairs again, only he doesn't answer. I buzz again, and I'm getting my phone out to call him when the intercom clicks and I hear his voice.

"I can see you," he says, and I aim my middle finger at the camera, and he laughs. "I heard this buzzing noise but I didn't know it was the door. Hang on, down in a sec."

We drive – me in the van, him in the car – to the depot where the van came from, and I hand back the keys to Denny with a few notes for his trouble. Then we drive down to the supermarket and get some shopping in. Steven starts thinking out loud about what he's going to make for supper but I tell him, "No, Steven, you ain't cooking tonight, no way. You're tired. I'm tired. Jesus, we ain't stopped today."

"Get a takeaway then?"

"Yeah. Whatever you like. We'll get something to wash it down though, yeah?"

I add a bottle of champagne to our trolley.

Pizza is what he fancies, so we stop off and get some on our way back. It's almost dark now. As we carry the warm boxes to the car, Steven says, "I can't wait to get home, Bren, can you?"

I put the pizzas on the back seat, and I stop Steven as he opens the passenger door. I take his face in my hands and I kiss him.

"I better get you home then."

:::::::

I put the champagne in the fridge.

"Can you hang on till I've had a shower?" he says. "Then I'll stick the pizzas in the oven, hot them up when we're ready. I'm all sweaty and horrible. That's if the shower works – we haven't tried it yet, have we."

We both go into the bathroom and check that the shower works. It does. He's already unpacked the shower gel and shampoo, they're on the shelf in the cubicle, and we both get in.

His hair looks long when it's wet. I slick it back with my hands.

When I turn the water off he steps closer and puts his arms around my neck and we hold on to each other for a moment before we get out.

"We forgot to get a bath mat," he says.

"Didn't we bring it with us?"

"It was too manky to bring. I'll put it on the list."

We dry off and go and find some clean clothes to put on, and then he goes to sort the food and I get out the closest approximation to champagne glasses I can find. I take them and the bottle into the living room; stop; and go back to the kitchen.

"Know what we ain't got?" I ask him.

"What?"

"A table."

He laughs.

"I'll put it on the list," he says. "We want a coffee table and a _table_ table. What we gonna do for now?"

"Use the TV thing, will we? The stand, unit, whatever you call it."

I put the champagne down and we both go and shift the thing from where we left it in the corner when we'd brought it upstairs, to in front of the sofa. It's oak and heavy, and it's as long as a coffee table so it'll do for tonight.

"Good job we hadn't put the telly on it yet," Steven says.

"If we had'a done I wouldn'a been up for unwiring all that kit again. We would'a eaten off the fucking floor."

I go and get the bottle and glasses, and when I come back, Steven has turned down the lights.

"What?" he says when I raise an eyebrow at him. "It's romantic, right, so you can shut up."

"Didn't say a word."

By the time I've opened and poured the champagne he's brought in the pizzas and the garlic bread. We stand and look out onto the canal, and we drink, and then we sit down together on the sofa and eat, and for a while that's all we do because we're starving hungry, and for once he's eating as much as I am. It's good to see, after seeing the weight fall off him those few days he was ill.

"Not as good as my pizza," he says eventually. "Nice though."

I refill his glass.

"Here. Not that I'm trying to get you drunk," I say.

"I already am."

We drink, and we kiss. His lips are oily and salty and he tastes of garlic, and when we turn our attention back to the food my arm stays along the back of the sofa and each time he turns to look at me, his head rests on my arm and his eyes shine in the low light.

The pizza's finished but there's one piece of garlic bread left. I pick it up.

"Want some?"

I hold it for him to take a bite, then I finish it. He picks some crumbs off my thigh. I stroke his hand as it rests on my knee. We drink the last of the champagne.

He goes off to the bathroom, and when he comes back he says, "I've forgot to ring the kids. It's too late now, they'll be asleep."

"You can do it in the morning. They knew you were gonna have a busy day today."

He sits down again.

"I forgot though. It just feels like it's only you and me that exists."

"There is no one else." I kiss him and he curls his knees half onto my lap, and his mouth tastes of toothpaste now. "Come to bed, yeah?"

I stand up, pull him to his feet.

"Just gonna clear this up first," he says.

"Gonna be houseproud now, are you? We'll see how long that lasts."

I wink at him, and he smiles and starts stacking the plates. He's done it by the time I come back from the bathroom.

"Dunno how the dishwasher works," he says. "No point putting it on till it's full anyway. You alright? You're looking at me funny."

"Maybe you're a funny-looking guy. Come to bed."

He goes into our bedroom ahead of me, my hand on the small of his back, but he stops.

"Oh, fuck, we in't made the bed."

"Fuck." We can't sleep on a bare mattress. "Where's the..?"

"Here." He picks up the bag with the new duvet in and I rip it open while he roots around in the department store carrier bag for a sheet and a duvet cover. "Give us a hand."

We stand one each side of the bed and fit the sheet on, and then he gets the cover out of its packaging and shakes it out. Between us we get the duvet inside it but it's a fucking job and a half, and I'm losing the will. When it's in, we both start doing up the buttons along the bottom edge of it, and we meet in the middle and our hands touch, and I take his hand and I press it against my crotch, and just his touch through the denim brings the blood to my cock. He smiles, and strips off his top.

"You're such a pushover, Steven." I get hold of the waistband of his trackies – against my knuckles, his stomach is warm and I can feel the soft hairs of his treasure-trail – and I pull him towards me.

"I'm too tired to play hard to get, in't I." There's no energy in his kiss: it's loose-mouthed, lazy, hot enough to tempt a saint. "Which bin bag d'you reckon the lube's in?"

"Fuck knows." I laugh, and we both start searching. "You not got something in that spanking new kitchen of yours we could use? You got olive oil? Extra virgin..."

"Make a mess of the sheets, wouldn't it. Got the pillows anyway," he says, and he empties one of the bags onto the bed. There are the pillows we woke up on this morning in the other place, and he throws them to the head of the bed, and there's the canister of lube too. "Got it. Last thing I packed, weren't it."

"So get your clothes off."

He's on the far side of the bed and he pushes his trackies and his underpants down and steps out of them, and then he comes across the bed on his hands and knees and I kneel on the bed to meet him. His skin is warm under my hands.

"Turn the light off," he says.

"You going shy on me, Steven? Bit late for that."

"No, but if we don't turn it off now you're gonna make me get up and do it after, and I don't wanna get up after, do I. Cos I'll be all..."

"All what? Knackered?"

"No. Well, yeah, but you know. All, like... with you."

I go and switch the light off.

"We need to get bedside lights," I say, "Then we won't have to get up to turn them off."

"They're on me list. We an't got anything to stand them on yet anyway."

"They're coming in the week though." I take off my jeans. "Then maybe when we got our own set of drawers each, you'll stop nicking my socks."

"Liar, _you_ nick _my_ socks."

He's on his back now on top of the cover, his limbs stretched out starfish-style like he's testing the dimensions of the new bed. I drop my boxers.

"Quid pro quo, ain't it," I say.

"What's that mean?"

"Means it's only fair: you nick my socks, I'll nick yours."

I kneel between his open legs. His teeth and his eyes gleam in the almost-dark. I lean over him and kiss his mouth, and then I get off him and lie back, my shoulders against the headboard. He crawls onto me and kisses me. Jesus, he's rubbing himself on me and I can feel us both getting hard. I knead the cheeks of his arse like dough.

He stops mid-kiss and looks around.

"Where's the stuff?" He sees the lube where it landed on the bed and reaches for it. "Hand."

I hold my hand in front of him and he pumps out a thick blob of it onto my fingers, then he throws the canister aside and picks up where he left off kissing me. I spread him with one hand, glaze him with the other, taste the groans he makes in my mouth as I slide my fingers from his hole to his balls and back again, and in.

He sits himself up, holds my shoulders and lets me angle my cock into him, and then as he slides himself down and his body swallows me it's like he's raging against it, _Fuck fuck fuck god god fuck_, his eyes locked on mine in a kind of fury, and then he tells me he loves me.

I pull his head down and kiss him. He removes his right hand from my shoulder and starts playing with himself. He doesn't stop moving on me. I hold his bottom lip between my teeth, enough (I hope) to leave a mark before I release it and kiss him some more.

His breaths are coming faster, and his mouth is at my ear, and he says, "Will you suck me off, please?"

I get hold of him by the hair and peer at his face in the darkness.

"What a polite young man you are, Steven."

"Will you though?" His gaze drops from my eyes to my mouth. "I wanna come."

"Okay."

There's an interesting noise as he lifts himself up and my cock slips out of him and hits my stomach. He leans up over me and grips the headboard behind me, and his dick is in my face. I take hold of it. It feels thickened and tight in my fist; I brush my thumb across its wet tip. He's on the brink. I lick around the head then suck it in. He's a good boy, Steven is: he doesn't thrust even though there's tension crackling like static off every part of him, because he knows I won't have it. I reward him with a finger inside him pressed right on his sweet spot, and he comes, shuddering and crying out, and I swallow around him, and his cum slides down my throat like warm cream.

He sits back, heavy and breathless, and when I hold his face again and kiss him, his tongue sweeps around my mouth like he's chasing his own taste. My cock feels ready to explode under his weight.

"You wanna fuck me now?"

I push him off me and we're lying face to face, then I tell him, "Turn around." He rolls over onto his other side and I pull him against me, his back against my belly. "Bend your legs up. Like, curl up, yeah?"

He draws his knees up to his chest and hugs his arms around them. I feel for his hole, and it's easy to get into him again when he's like this – spent and unresistant – and when he's folded in half at the hips the inside of him stretches out into a long smooth channel for me to fill. I grip his shin and thrust slowly, and I kiss and bite his shoulder and his neck and his ear.

When I come, the convex curve of his spine snaps straight like I've taken him by surprise, and his muscles tighten around my cock and empty me, and my senses are suddenly acute. I can feel the individual hairs of his head against my face, and I can taste the minerals in his sweat. I can smell the soap he used in the shower and I can smell sex and brand new sheets, and I can hear the beating of my heart and his.

He turns to lie facing me and I reach across him and take hold of the edge of the duvet and pull it over him, and he does the same, reaches behind me and brings the cover over me so the edges meet, and we're cocooned in it.

I don't remember us waking up in the night but we must have done, because in the morning we're not on top of the cover any more, we're under it, face to face in the middle of the bed.

:::::::

Saturday morning we go and buy _paint etc_ after Steven's spoken to the kids, and we get a coffee table and order a _table_ table – the kind that folds out for if there's more than just us four sitting down to eat, which is apparently a possibility according to my husband. Also we get some lamps and a bath mat. After we get back from the shops, the intercom buzzes and there's a fella at the door with a big bunch of flowers – pink – and when I read the card it says, _Ste and Bren, Happy new home! Can't wait to see it. All our love, Chez and Nate xxx_

The flowers come with a vase, which is lucky because vases weren't on Steven's list.

Saturday night when I get home from work I can smell paint, and I look into the kids' room and Steven has painted two sky blue walls already. We get the other two done by the time I go to work on Sunday.

Monday is the bank holiday. It's set to be a busy night at the club so I can't take the time off, but it's a nice day and we go for a walk along the canal path, and it ends up with him walking with me to the club. We kiss goodbye at the goods entrance.

Later I take a break for half an hour before it gets too busy, and I walk home. Steven's busy painting again.

"Hiya," he says, "What you doing home? Come for a painty handjob, have you?" and he threatens my suit with an emulsion-smeared hand.

I guess I wasn't paying attention when we bought the paint, because it comes as a surprise to me that there's a rainbow taking shape on one wall of the kids' bedroom, arcing from the top corner down to the floor.

"It's a bit..."

"A bit what?" he asks.

"Gay."

"No. Why? Oh, right, cos it's a rainbow?"

"Yeah."

"It's a proper rainbow, Brendan, not a rainbow flag." He explains the concept: "Leah wanted the sky and butterflies, right, but Lucas wanted the sea and boats, didn't he, so I thought if I do a rainbow it can be, like, sky above it, and the sea underneath. That's why I done it blue, cos it's alright for the sea and the sky, innit. Does it look alright?"

"They'll love it, won't they."

He smiles. There's a smudge of yellow paint on his cheekbone, and the old T-shirt of mine that he's wearing hangs lose on his straight shoulders, and his feet are bare on the rumpled dustsheet, and I fix this image in my mind so when I go back to work I can recall every detail of the man I'll be coming home to.

A day or two later and he's finished it off with these big stickers he's got of butterflies (above the rainbow) and boats (below it.) I stick a butterfly among the boats and a boat in the sky while he's not looking, and it takes a while for him to notice, and I deny all knowledge, tell him he must have done it by mistake. He doesn't buy it, and I apologise, and when it transpires that we can't unstick them and it's going to have to stay like that, I have to push him up against the rainbow and kiss him till he stops sulking.

Next day, we can't put it off any longer. Those bunk beds have been in their flatpacks propped in a corner ever since we heaved them up the stairs, and the kids will be wanting to sleep on them at the weekend so we've got to get them made.

It's a fucking nightmare, right from when we start unpacking them first thing in the morning and Steven wants to check that we've got all the parts we're meant to have, and I just want to get on with the job because the sooner we start, the sooner it'll be done. I'm taking the uprights into the kids' room – at least, they look like the uprights – and he's telling me to hang on while he looks at the instructions or something. Jesus. Then I'm starting to screw it together and he's snatching the screwdriver from me and saying I'm doing it in the wrong order, and he's jabbing his finger at the diagrams, and I carry on regardless only it turns out he was right and I was wrong because there's these horizontal slats that you're meant to slot in before you screw the frame together, and how was I meant to know that?

I'm pissed off. I tell him to do it himfuckingself if he's such an expert, and I go and put the telly on loud enough that I can't hear if he's swearing at me or breaking things.

It takes me maybe an hour to get a grip. I turn off the television and I go and see how he's doing.

He's sitting in the middle of the floor with parts of the beds all around him. He's dismantled what I'd put together and started again from scratch.

I squat down beside him.

"How far you got?" I ask, and I look at the instruction sheet that's spread out in front of him.

"There," he says, and points at the diagram he's on.

"Okay."

We work without speaking, ploughing methodically through each step in order until the set of bunk beds is complete. By the time we're done I've just got time for a shower before I leave for work, and I don't think either of us speaks a sentence until I tell him I love him before I go, and he says, "And so you bloody should. I love you too."

That night he comes to see me at the club. I come down the stairs from the members' floor and there he is, and he shouts over the music, "I brought you some dinner."

I get myself a whiskey and him a lager, and we go through to the office. The music is still loud but we can hear ourselves in here, and he hands me what he's brought in a foil wrapper. It's a steak sandwich, the steak sliced thin and cooked rare how I like it, the onions caramelised so they're almost melting into the bread, and it's still warm because home is close now. So close.

:::::::

Thursday. I'm at work and my sister calls.

It's not that we don't talk – we do. I mean, I call her or she calls me. We _touch base_. I let her know what's going on, for example how my job is going; when we found the flat; when I decided to sell the holiday house; when we got the date for moving in. She keeps me abreast of things in her world: their plans for Nathan's estate; her hospitality business; the names from our past who she comes across or hears about. A couple of times since she came to our wedding, she and Nathan have come over to England to see his mother and to pack up her house when she moved over to live with them, and we've met up, the four of us, for a meal or a few drinks, and it's been fine. Steven loves her, and I like that because I love her too, and if he's been a little quiet after we've said goodbye I reckon it's because he misses her.

So it's Thursday night and I'm at work and she calls, and she says they're flying over from Ireland tomorrow because Nathan's got a couple of meetings, and they're making a weekend of it.

"So would tomorrow be a good day for us to pop round and see your new home, Bren?"

"Course, yeah. I gotta work, is the only thing. I'll see if I can swing it though, get the night off, but either way Steven'll be there, so."

"That would be great. We're only gonna be in Chester one night, then down to London on Saturday for Nate's other meeting, so it's got to be tomorrow for us."

"You got a place to stay? He still got his ma's place?"

"That's all sold up, so we'll sort a hotel for the night when we fly in tomorrow."

"Stay with us, then, Chez, yeah? Long as you don't mind bunk beds – the kids ain't here till Saturday so you can have their room. You'll get a better breakfast than you'll get in a hotel, don't tell me you ain't missed my fry-ups."

She laughs.

"Think I'd rather Ste cooked my breakfast than you, thanks. That would be grand though, Bren, if it's okay with yous two. Proper catch-up."

"That's settled, then."

:::::::

It's not much past midnight when I get home, and Steven is still up watching a film.

I sit down next to him on the couch and give him a kiss.

"You're early," he says, and switches off the television with the remote. "I'll watch the end tomorrow."

"Yeah, it was quiet so I knocked off early, there's plenty of staff on to close up."

"Good."

"We got company tomorrow, Steven. Cheryl and Nathan are over, they're gonna come round. That okay?"

"Yeah, mint." He looks happy. "Be nice, show our place off. They coming in the day? Cos you're working in the evening, in't you?"

"He's got a meeting or something in the afternoon. They're gonna head over here after that. I'm not gonna go into work till eleven, so I'll be here till then. I better find my cheque book, see about giving Chez her money."

"Am I cooking dinner?"

"Only if you want to, or we can go out. Up to you."

"I'll cook I think. Haven't tried the kitchen properly yet, have I, not proper cooking."

"Cheryl's already looking forward to your breakfast menu."

"Breakfast? How d'you mean?"

"They're staying over. Just the one night, obviously, before Leah and Lucas need the room." I look at Steven when I feel him lean away from me. "That okay?"

"You didn't think about asking me first?"

"What? No. Thought you'd be okay with it, Steven, she's my sister. She's your friend, ain't she?"

"And what... what cheque? What money you gonna give her?" He stands up and walks away.

I stand up too.

"The money from the holiday house. Her share anyways, you know, half of what's left." I go to him, get hold of his arm to turn him to face me but he snatches it away. "Steven, the fuck's your problem?"

"Thought your nan left it to you, not Cheryl?" He turns to look at me in his own time. "Why you giving her half the money?"

"Because she's my sister."

"You know why your nan left it to you, Brendan." His voice is low, like he's working to stop himself shouting. "You don't owe Cheryl nothing."

"This is..." I don't know what to say; I don't know where this has come from. "I'm going to bed. Talk about it in the morning."

I head for the bathroom but Steven's voice stops me.

"I don't want her staying the night, right?"

"What? What's wrong with you?"

"She... they can come over. That's nice, Bren, okay, I want to see them. You know I do, right, but I just... I can't..."

"What you talking about? You telling me I can't have my own sister staying the night in my own fucking flat?"

"No." He shakes his head, and I can see from across the room that he's trembling with anger. "I can't tell you that, can I, if it's your fucking flat. She can stay if you want, right, I'm just telling you what _I_ want, if you're even bothered."

"What are you saying, Steven, hm?" This is fucking ridiculous. "You want me to choose between you and my sister?"

"You already did, Brendan!"

"_What_?"

"You already chose, didn't you. Three fucking years ago, yeah? Three fucking, _fucking_ years ago, Brendan, you chose her over me."


	7. Chapter 7

"You already chose, didn't you. Three fucking years ago, yeah? Three fucking, _fucking_ years ago, Brendan, you chose her over me."

"I didn't. It wasn't... it wasn't Cheryl or you, it was... It was what I had to do, Steven, okay, it wasn't a choice between her and you, it was a choice between the right thing and the wrong thing."

Steven stands, arms loose by his sides as if all his energy is going into finding the words he wants to say.

"That was the right thing, was it?" he says. "Leaving me because of what she done, you think that was right?"

"Jesus, we've talked about this, I thought you – "

"We haven't, though."

"Yeah we have." I think we have, a bit, or is it the conversations in my head that I'm remembering?

"Alright, yeah, a bit," he says, like he's reading my mind.

"Not enough for you, though." I can hear the snarl in my voice, and I try to kill it. "It wasn't easy, Steven, okay? I didn't have time to... to weigh things up, I was in the situation and I had to sort it. I couldn't let her go to prison."

"Nate would'a got her the best, like, lawyers and that. She would'a been out by now anyway, wouldn't she, and we – "

"There was no guarantee of that. She brought the gun over to the club – that's premeditation. That's murder, okay, that's a life sentence."

"No, that never would'a happened. She would'a got manslaughter, same as you did, cos of... Cos what she saw on that video, that was _traumatic_, weren't it, and she was defending you anyway. You know I'm right, Brendan. You could'a just told the truth." He pauses, and then he says, "_She_ could."

"It ain't that simple, Steven. You don't understand."

"So tell me, yeah. If I don't understand, tell me."

"Okay, I couldn't take the chance, could I. Cheryl, she's a good girl, a good person... A criminal record, everyone looking at her knowing she killed her own – Thinking she's a monster. Her life would'a been ruined."

"What about _my_ life? What about my life, when you was gone?"

He's close enough to touch but touching him is unthinkable. I think he would fight like a cat if I tried, or he would shrink away from my hand.

"I ain't gone now though. I'm back, ain't I. We're back on track, Steven, we're okay."

"You didn't know that, though, not when you chose Cheryl. It weren't your plan, were it, coming back and picking up where we left off, no. You're here cos your plan went wrong and you didn't die when they shot you. You were leaving me for ever, you can't say you weren't."

"I thought you'd be okay. Okay? I thought – "

"How was I gonna be okay?" He almost laughs.

"You had the chance to get the kids back, with me out the way. You had the deli. I thought you'd..."

"What?"

"Live your life."

"Oh, yeah, I lived me life." His pupils are flared with anger. "When I wasn't getting beat up, and... me mum... and doing the drugs, and trying to find someone who was gonna love me enough so he wouldn't leave me, yeah, in between all that I had a lovely life."

"Who beat you up?" I'm in his face and he turns his head away, and I'm still not touching him but I'm backing him against the wall. "And what..? Doing _drugs_?"

"Dealing. _Dealing_ drugs." He's still not looking at me. "You think I'm that stupid?"

I don't think he's stupid. I just think he's telling lies.

"That who beat you up, was it? The fella you were dealing for? Who was he, Steven, hm?"

"I ain't telling you, no." He looks at me, and his irises are the colour of a bruise. "They're nobody, and you in't going back to prison for them."

"Tell me."

"I said no."

Maybe it's not lies I'm smelling on him; maybe it's secrets. Either way there's things I don't know, and it's getting to me.

"Ain't gonna tell me who _they_ were either? The blokes you had in your bed?"

"What does it matter?"

"Anyone I know, was it? How many, Steven, hm?"

"Brendan, so what if it was one or it was a hundred? There wouldn'a been any if I'd known you wasn't gone for ever, and I wish, right, I _wish_ you was the only bloke I ever been with, but you're not."

"Like I give a fuck."

I leave him, go into the kitchen, pour a whiskey, swallow it.

"You gonna get drunk?" He's followed me. "You gonna start drinking at work again too, are you, now that you don't have to stay sober for driving home?"

"What if I am?" I pour another.

"I don't like you when you're drunk."

There's an edge of accusation in his voice, and I feel the shame seeping out from where I keep it locked away, and it riles me. One of my _triggers_, shame is: I learned that from the therapist inside. My only trigger, you might say, because it's what you're left with, hot and toxic, when you boil all the other ones down. _Shame_.

I follow him back into the living room and I take off my jacket, and this is where I roll up my sleeves. That's what my muscle-memory is telling me. That's what happens next.

Instead, I sit down.

He stays standing, and when I look up at him he's drying his eyes with his sleeves on the heels of his hands like a child, and it's three years ago. ___I just don't understand how you can do this to someone that loves you as much as me._

I don't touch my glass. I take a breath.

"I thought you were okay with Cheryl. You've seen her – we've seen her, ain't we, and you've been okay, so why's it a problem this time?"

"We've seen her, yeah, but only for, like, a dinner or whatever. It's alright like that, innit, just a visit and then she goes and we get back to normal. It's not the same as if she stays the night here."

"You've stayed with her though. She told me, first time they let her visit me, she said you'd been over in Ireland staying with her and Nathan. She gave me a photograph – you went there, Steven, so why the fuck are you – ?"

"D'you wanna know why I went and stayed there, do you? I went cos I had to get away because, you know like you couldn't of stood the thought of people looking at Cheryl like she was a monster, yeah? Well that's how people was looking at me, right, cos I was a monster's boyfriend, cos I lived with a serial killer, didn't I, so I must'a known what you was like, so I must'a been a monster too. And if they wasn't looking at me like that, they was looking at me like they felt sorry for me – and maybe they should, yeah, cos... cos the deli, the pub, the club, the flat, everywhere I went all I could see was you. How sad is that, eh?"

"Sit down, Steven, for fucksake. Fucking standing over me."

He sits down as far away from me as he can sit at the other end of this enormous fucking sofa, and when he speaks again it's quietly.

"The only people in the world that knew what was really true about you, about what happened... The only people that knew were Cheryl and Nate. That's why I went to stay with them, Brendan, cos they were the only ones that knew."

I can hear the pain in him – I can _feel_ it – and it makes me defensive, so I won't back down.

"You stayed with her then, so what's the problem now, why can't she stay with us? It's just one night, Steven, Jesus."

"This is our place, Brendan. And I know you love her, and I love her too, right, I really do, but if she's... if she's spending the night here, in our Leah and Lucas's bedroom when Leah and Lucas ain't even seen it yet, it's like... it's like she's... It's like our new start's getting all sort of caught up in the past again in my head, and we in't even been here hardly a week, and it's our place. It's our place."

He's tearing my heart, and I hate him for it. She's my sister, and he's making me see her in a way I don't want to see her, and I need to love her. I need to believe in her or everything I went through starts to lose any point it ever had.

"No. No, there's something you ain't saying." I stand up now and cross to the window, part the slats of the blind with my fingers and look out at the lights glittering on the canal's dark surface. "You gonna spit it out, are you? Cos it's one o'clock in the morning, and I wanna get some sleep even if you don't."

"Alright, she lied. Yeah, that's me problem, right, she lied to me for years, didn't she, all the time you were inside."

"What you talking about, 'she lied'?"

"About your sentence. About you taking back your confession. All that time, she let me carry on thinking you was doing life cos of all them five murders, and I was thinking, yeah, there's no point in Cheryl telling the police it was her that shot Seamus, cos you'd still be in for life anyway for them other ones, and if she was sent down it would break your heart cos you hadn't saved her." His voice gets closer; I know he's behind me now although I don't look round. "But she knew. She knew you was only done for Seamus in the end, so she could'a gone and confessed after all, and you would'a been out cos they had nothing else on you. She knew, and she said nothing."

I spin around, catch him by the front of his hoodie, half lift him off the floor with it.

"Don't say that about her. Don't say that."

"Brendan." His hands are on my wrists. His eyes are wide with shock, but he doesn't look scared, and it kills me.

I let go of him, take a step back so he's out of reach. He doesn't move.

"I didn't want you to know. Okay? It was me. It was my decision, I told her not to tell you."

"Why though?"

"So you could live your life."

"My fantastic bloody life. Did you not think I had a right to know? I would'a waited, Bren, I would'a done things different if I knew you were coming back. I wouldn'a done things, like... if I knew... if I thought there was hope."

"So everything's my fault is it, huh? You getting yourself into shit with drug dealers, that's my fault? Getting back with Douglas, yeah? Fucking around with god alone knows who, these fellas who were meant to _love_ you? My fault. Grow up, Steven. Jesus."

"Are you not listening? All them things, yeah, it was down to me. But I wouldn'a done them, would I, if Cheryl had'a told me about your sentence. She didn't have to keep quiet just cos you told her to. She owed it to me, Brendan. She owed it to both of us, for what we lost because of her."

"Are _you_ not listening? I couldn't risk it. I couldn't risk you talking, okay, and her ending up inside. Because I knew you'd work it out, see, if you knew I was only in for killing... for killing him – I knew you'd work out I'd be out if the one death I'd put my hands up to was put on Cheryl. And I was right, wasn't I, you've worked it out, but if you'd worked it out back then and told anyone – "

"You think I would'a grassed her up? No. But you're right though, I would'a made her tell them herself. I would'a made her do the right thing not the wrong thing."

"That's the chance I couldn't take, Steven, I couldn't let Cheryl go down for it. I couldn't. I couldn't have people see her as a person who could do a thing like that."

"Yeah, I know, you said. You couldn't let her life be ruined."

"No, I couldn't. I had to protect my sister. Jesus, Steven, d'you not know I'd do the same for you in a heartbeat? If it was you who shot him – if it was you, I would'a done the same, I would'a taken the fall."

"I know you would. D'you think I don't know that?" He wipes his sleeve across his eyes. "I know you would'a done the same if it was me, but it's different. Don't you get it? After everything we been through, don't you get it?"

"What?"

"You would'a done the same for me as what you did for Cheryl, yeah, but it's _different_. It's different."

"Why? Why's it different, why?"

"Because I wouldn'a let you. That's why it's different, Brendan. I never would'a let you."

I feel like I've been punched in the gut. I hear a noise like an animal and I think it's me – it must be, it must be me, because he's holding me now. We're holding each other because there's no one else who knows how.

We stay like that for I don't know how long: until we can each stay up on our own I guess. Then I go to where I'd left my whiskey, and I drink it, and I sit down on the sofa. He sits down too, closer this time but still out of reach. I don't look at him.

"I stayed till I knew she was safe, Steven."

"What d'you mean?"

"When we were kids. I wanted to leave, you know? Run away, go missing. Go into care, even – I wouldn'a minded that, it would'a been... But I stayed, cos I didn't know if... I thought if I wasn't there, if he didn't have me to... I didn't know if he might'a gone to my sister. I didn't know."

"Brendan – "

"I stayed till she was old enough to know what was right and what was wrong – till I knew she was the kind who would speak up, you know? Till I could see he only wanted her to love him in the right way. I just wanna... wanna explain. If Cheryl went down for killing our dad, everything I... the years I stayed and he... If she'd ended up with everything taken from her it would'a been like it was all for nothing."

"It weren't for nothing though, you kept your dad away from hurting her when she was little. That was enough, Bren, right. Enough sacrificing. What sacrificing did she ever do for you, eh?"

"She killed her dad."

"That weren't sacrificing, he was – "

"She loved him, and she killed him, and she's gotta live the rest of her life remembering it every day. You don't forget something like that, it doesn't go away, it's always there, it's... And she did it for me, okay, and if that ain't a sacrifice, Steven, I don't know what is."

"D'you think I don't know what it feels like? Or cos it's your sister it's worse is it?"

"It wasn't the same with your mum, was it. You were helping her out, she asked you to do it, it wasn't like you went and – "

"No, it's not the same. Cos I didn't ruin people's lives after I done it."

I look at him and see a tear run its track down his cheek. His hand is resting by his side and I reach out and hold his wrist and stroke the back of his hand with my thumb.

"I couldn't let him win," I say; I need to make Steven understand.

"He didn't win though, he's dead."

"In here, though." I tap my temple with my finger. "I can _hear_ him, if she'd gone to prison and I was out. _Thought you'd kept your sister safe? Look at her now_."

"Don't do his voice."

"I don't even know if we would'a made it, Steven, you and me, if Cheryl had gone down for it instead of me. I couldn'a lived with it."

"Course we would'a made it. All our problems, they were always cos of other people trying to get us, weren't they. Seamus, Walker. That Kevin. They were all gone, weren't they, so all we would'a had to worry about was Cheryl, and we could'a helped Nate with anything, appeals and that. We could'a gone and visited her every visiting day."

"Amy wouldn'a let you see your kids with me around."

"She would'a let me go and see them on me own, wouldn't she. And she would'a let us both see them once you had your anger management. It would'a been like now."

"I only got the anger management cos I was in prison."

"I would'a made you do it though. Cos it all would'a had to come out, wouldn't it, cos that video would'a been Cheryl's mit... mitigation, so you would'a had to talk about it, and then you would'a got help. We would'a made it, Brendan. Course we would."

He sees everything in a clear light, while I face into the dark corners.

"I didn't even know if you'd still want me."

"What you on about?" he says. "When?"

"That day, the day it all happened. I only just told you, didn't I, about what he did to me, and then it all happened and I had to look after Chez. How do I know if you still would'a wanted me?"

"Cos I told you I did. Are you serious? You think I was lying, do you? D'you remember, I told you, the only thing that mattered was that I loved you and you loved me?"

"I remember, yeah, but when it came to it, how do I know you would'a still wanted... When you knew I'd been..."

"I'm that shallow, am I? Is that what you think? Look what happened, first chance I got I had you back in me bed when you got let out, didn't I, so what you even on about?"

"That was years after you found out though. It wasn't bang in the front of your mind when I came home from prison, was it, but if we'd tried to... back then, after I first told you, you think you would'a wanted me? Because I don't think you would, not if you were seeing me how I saw me."

"Well we won't ever know, will we, cos Cheryl went and shot your dad."

We sink into silence.

The adrenaline of combat has worn off and I realise I'm exhausted.

"I'm gonna get a shower," I say, and I go.

He's gone to bed when I come out of the bathroom. He seems to be asleep, but he's pretending: he doesn't know the particular rhythm of his breath when he's sleeping, but I do, and this isn't it. I wonder if he's faking it because he's had enough of our fractious parlay for one night, or if it's because I've put into his head the thought of the damage that was done to me and he doesn't want me to touch him. Either way I haven't told him I love him and he hasn't said it to me, so I'd better not die in the night.

The thing about this new bed of ours is, he can be on his side of it and I can be on mine, and there's enough dead space in between us that we might as well be in separate beds. That hasn't happened on our first six nights in it, but it's happening on our seventh, and when I wake in the night I feel the absence of his warmth. I sleep fitfully. One time when I wake up, I hear him in my head and I know, with a clarity that makes my heart stop, that he did tell me he loves me: _Because I wouldn'a let you. That's why it's different, Brendan. I never would'a let you._

I lie awake then wondering what this says about Cheryl, and other things start nagging at me, memories of the times we were estranged, of how I fought to win her back; and I think about the choices I've made and what they've led to. And there's that shame again, burning me.

Next time I wake it's dawn and Steven's not there. He must have gone to the bathroom, and when he comes back I wonder if maybe he'll... But he gets back in on his side, away from me, and the bed feels emptier than it did when he wasn't in it.

In the morning though when I come to, he's somehow found his way across no-man's-land and he's here lying on his side against me with his head on my shoulder and his arm across my stomach and his leg across my legs. The vest he's wearing is worn thin, he's had it so long; I think maybe he keeps it because its cotton has softened with age. It looks grey against his skin.

He must feel me looking at him because he wakes up. While his eyes are still shut I see the memory of last night show itself on his face, and when he registers that he's next to me he looks as if he wonders how he got here, given the terms we're on. He looks as surprised as I feel. He can't blame me for this one though: it's my side of the bed he's invaded.

He glances at me when he opens his eyes, and starts to move away but the wrist of the arm that's across me brushes against my cock so he finds out I've woken up with a hard-on. He considers briefly and then he gets it in his fist and gives a couple of casual, inexact strokes. I think maybe peace has broken out but when I go to touch his face he twitches his head away, and his expression is somewhere between blank and hostile. He rolls onto his back and wriggles out of his boxers then he clambers across me to get the lubricant, straddles my thighs and lubes himself up, smears the excess onto his dick and gives himself a pull or two. His nose is running from early morning congestion – his voice would be thick with it if we were speaking, but we're not – and he wipes it with the back of his hand, and if I was a better man I'd think this boy was a gift to me from God.

I reach to touch his face again, and again he pulls away, so when he starts getting in position to ride me I don't let him. I push him off me and he tries to get back astride me but he's got no chance. I get him on his back, spread his legs roughly and kneel in between them. I push his vest up under his arms and rub his nipples hard with my thumbs. He grapples with me, tries grabbing my wrists but I shake them free and his arms flop onto the pillows above his head and stay there as if I'm not an opponent worth fighting. I slap his belly with the back of my hand. He glares at me – the first eye contact we've had I think – and bends his leg and puts his foot on my chest. I hitch it onto my shoulder and fall onto him, and feel his other leg circle my back, and I angle my cock into his hole and watch his mouth open wide as a scream when I push home.

I manoeuvre so I've got his wrists pinned to the bed, and I keep rocking into him, and he presses his heel under my arse to make me go deeper, faster. We don't kiss, and we don't speak until I think of the one man or the hundred men who had him while I was gone, and then I tell him he's a fucking whore, and he tells me he fucking hates me.

I let him have a hand free to jerk himself off, and he comes before I do, and when I come it's like a storm in my head, flashes lighting up the dark.

I get out of him and off him. His cum is spattered across his belly and I rub it into his skin then pull his vest down over it and wipe my hand on the fabric.

He turns away, and so do I.

:::::::

When I wake up again I'm on my own. It's a text that's woken me, from Cheryl, saying they'll be with us at six. I text back to say it's okay.

I sit up and see a note leaning against the new lamp on my new bedside cabinet: _Gone shops x_. I analyse it while I'm in the shower. He's shopping, which means he's shopping for the dinner he's going to make for Cheryl and Nathan. And there's the fact he bothered to leave a note at all. And there's the _x_. Maybe he's okay with my sister now, maybe we're okay.

I go into the kids' room when I'm dressed, look through the stuff that's still packed in bin bags from the move. I find their bedsheets and duvets, and I put the sheets on the mattresses on the bunk beds. We don't know yet which bunk Leah's going to choose and which one Lucas will want, so I don't know whose duvet to put on which bed for them; but I sling one on each for Nathan and Chez because they won't care either way tonight.

Steven gets home with bags of shopping.

"Been down the shops," he says.

"You don't say."

"I did say. I left you a note."

"Didn't see it."

"Right," he says. "This is all on me credit card. Dunno what I'm gonna do when the bill comes in."

"I'll sort it."

"That's not what I meant. I'm just saying."

"They're gonna be here at six, Cheryl says."

"I know, I got a text." He starts unpacking his shopping.

"You okay, yeah?"

"Why wouldn't I be, Brendan?"

"Will you stop slamming the fucking cupboards, then? I ain't stopping them coming, okay?"

"I'm fucking cooking, aren't I? I know you're not stopping them coming, I never asked you to, did I."

"I don't want you saying anything to Chez tonight, okay? Anything you said to me last night, Steven, I don't want her hearing it."

He shuts the fridge door and turns to look at me.

"I won't, will I. I've kept me mouth shut this long, I'm not gonna start now. I'm doing it for you, though, right? Not for her, for you."

"I need her to be okay."

"Look, Brendan, right, I love Cheryl and I'm not gonna say anything. I mean, I hate her at the same time, but I love her. "

"You hate me too?"

"Yeah." He says it as if it's obvious, no pause for thought required.

"Must be a thing with the Bradys."

"Must be."

"Anything you want me to do, or get? Cos I'm gonna get off to the club for an hour or two, got paperwork to do. That okay?"

"Yeah, you get off. Don't go missing though."

I go and get my jacket then I go back to the kitchen.

"Off now," I say to his back, and then I mumble, "Love you."

"I know you do, Brendan. Love you. Now go."

:::::::

I spend longer at the club than I intend, but I'm home by five or so. He'd rung me while I was out, he'd remembered the small point that our table hasn't been delivered yet so we'll have to eat with our plates on our laps tonight like we've been doing while it's just been the two of us. There's room for four on the sofa, but he says – and he has a point – that it's going to feel stupid if we're all sat in a row together. So I've borrowed an armchair from the office at the club; at least someone can sit on that. Had to walk home to get my car then drive back to pick up the chair, but I've managed to get it up the stairs without asking for a hand.

He's tidied the place and done some more unpacking.

The first thing he says when I've come in the door and dragged the armchair into place is, "You've made the beds in the kids' room."

"Yeah."

"So they're still staying over, are they, Cheryl and Nate?"

"What am I supposed to do, Steven? I already told them they could stay." Jesus.

"Yeah, you did, didn't you."

Fuck him. I go to our bedroom to put a clean shirt on.

He's changed the duvet cover and he's hidden the lube away somewhere, and he's sprayed the air with something – aftershave I think – so the room no longer smells of sex.

When I go looking for him he's checking on the dinner.

"Smells good," I say. "What we having?"

"Coq au vin." He tastes the sauce on a wooden spoon. "And it'll be your cock if you're not careful, mate."

"You're gonna need a bigger pot."

He glances round at me and I think – I _think_ – I see a smile before he turns back to the stove.

:::::::

He's gone to put his good jeans on when the intercom buzzes and I let Cheryl and Nathan in.

I shout to Steven that they're on their way up and he appears.

"Alright, I in't deaf," he says.

"Alright?"

"Alright. You alright?"

"Yeah." I open our front door, and hug my sister.

She's got one of those little cases on wheels, and Nathan's got a holdall. They leave them by the door.

"Good to see you, Bren," Cheryl says. "Ste! So good to see you, babe."

I watch them hug as I shake hands with Nathan. Steven looks genuinely glad to see her, just like he has each time we've seen her since I came home.

"You're our first visitors," he says.

"We're honoured," says Nathan. "It's a great location, I'm pleased for you both. Here, we've got – "

"We've brought a red and a white, and some whiskey from home for you, Brendan. Mmm, something smells good."

I can't say that things are the same as they used to be, between Cheryl and me. They're not. How could they be? Between us there used to be layers of lies because of what I had to hide from her since she was a wee girl, but since she found out what went on, or some of what went on, it's layers of guilt between us. I can see it whenever we're together but we both pretend it's not there, and as I look at her now I can see it: her guilt over me doing time for her, over not seeing our dad for what he was, and maybe over still loving him. I don't know. All I know is I can't let it get worse, I can't let her know the reach of the damage that's been done; she's my sister and I have to protect her from it. Only now, when I'm thinking how much there is to protect her from, I feel the weight of everything Steven said to me last night.

We show them around the flat, and they like it, and I can see Steven's pleased at their reaction: he looks proud, and I'm proud of him for the way he's behaving now that he's laid bare to me how intricately and thoroughly he feels wronged by my sister and by me. The fact is, I didn't know the half of it; the fact is, I didn't want to know.

:::::::

It's going fine. The food is good. I'm going easy on the wine because I'm going in to work at eleven till the early hours – Fridays at work are manic and I can't take the whole night off.

I'm on the armchair from the club, Steven's on the end of the sofa nearest the door off to the kitchen, Cheryl's in the middle and Nathan's next to her. At least we've got a coffee table now and enough matching wine glasses.

"So Ste," Cheryl says, "Are you still working back in the village?"

"No, I left, didn't I."

"You found something else?"

"Not yet. Haven't had a chance, have I, with moving house and that."

"Made sense for him to leave that job," I say. "There's better jobs here in town, just a question of the right one coming up."

"And you'll look after him in the mean time, won't you, Bren?"

I see Steven's body stiffen.

"I am here, you know," he says.

"He don't need looking after, Chez, he's his own man."

"Oh, I didn't mean..."

"Anyone want seconds?" Steven asks, and he looks at me. "I know you do."

"Always."

:::::::

Cheryl comes into the kitchen when I've gone in there to open another bottle of wine.

"So, married life's agreeing with you is it, Bren? You seem... I don't know... as if everything's finally worked out for yous two."

"Yeah, I guess it has. I got more than I ever thought I'd have, you know? Steven, this place, an okay job – "

"What about your kids though?"

"The kids are grand. We got them most weekends now. I swear they're an inch taller every time, Chez, you wouldn't know them. Maybe next time you're over you'll get to see them, yeah?"

"That's great, love, but I meant _your_ kids," she says, and it takes me a moment to figure what she means by the term. "I know you saw them when they were in Chester with Eileen the other week, but..."

"It's fine. It is what it is. We'll see them again if they want, I guess, but they're... It's a lot of water under the bridge." It's not one of the things I lose sleep over any more, but I can't tell my sister that. "How about you, Chez? Nathan treating you right is he?"

"Ha, only his ma calls him Nathan. But yeah, yeah he is. He's one in a million."

"Good." I look at her; there's some kind of sadness in her, and I close the kitchen door so we can talk. "Something up, is there?"

"No, why would there be?"

"Come on, it's me you're talking to. If there's something wrong I need to know."

"It's not..." She hesitates, and then it all pours out. "It's just, we've been trying for a baby and it's not happening, and I've said to Nate I'm not marrying him until I know I can give him a baby, and he says it doesn't matter because he never even wanted kids until he met me so if we don't have them, he'll still be happy. But I know he really wants them now, and if I can't – "

"Hey, shh." I hold her and stroke her newly-straightened hair. "It's okay, shh. It might not be you that's got the problem. It might just be taking a while, but it'll happen, okay?"

"It is me." She sniffs and reaches for a bit of kitchen paper to dry her eyes. "Sorry. It's me, we've had tests, Nate's sperm count is fine."

"Okay."

"It's funny, I always thought I'd get pregnant just like that when the time came. Why me, Bren? Am I being punished?"

"They can do something can't they? They got all kinds of, I dunno... Not really my area..."

"You did alright. Even my gay big brother has babies." She forces a laugh. "You're right though, there are things we can try. We're going to try IVF, going to start in the summer if nothing's happened by then."

"That's good then, ain't it, hm?"

I put my arms around her.

"You give the best hugs," she says. "Just like Daddy."

I wait for her to say something: _Sorry, you're nothing like him. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry_. I wait, but she's lost in her own thoughts.

:::::::

We're on the chocolate mousse now. He's made it in glasses (tumblers, new, matching) and there's these biscuit things he's made to go with it, and it's like you'd get in a restaurant. He's a talented man, Steven is.

They're telling us about how they're opening up Nathan's place for 'events', or planning to. Events meaning weddings once they're licensed for it, parties and so on. I reckon it sounds like they're turning it into a hotel, but no, apparently they'll be hooking up with a couple of hotels nearby to do the accommodation part of it, while they provide the space and the scenery.

"That's why we were in Chester today," says Nathan. "One of my old contacts is giving us some tips before we jump in."

"And there's this TV company wants to use Nate's estate as a location."

"_Our_ estate." Nathan holds Cheryl's hand.

"Our estate."

"What, like a sort of Geordie Shore, except it's about you?" Steven asks.

"No, babe, a proper drama series. They're filming loads in Ireland these days. We're meeting the producers about it tomorrow in Piccadilly."

"Thought you was going to London tomorrow," Steven says, "Not Piccadilly."

"Ste, Piccadilly's in London." Chez smiles at him and says to me, "It's lucky he's gorgeous, eh Bren, cos he'll never be the sharpest tool in the shed."

"Cheryl!" Nathan says, and then to Steven, "I think you're thinking of Manchester Piccadilly. There's another Piccadilly down in London."

"Right. I never knew."

I stand up.

"I'm gonna make some coffee."

"I'll do it," says Steven.

"No, Steven. You've done everything else." In the doorway I turn back. "Nathan, I don't know how you take your coffee," and once I've got his attention I indicate with a jerk of my head for him to come with me.

He looks puzzled, but he says, "I'll come and give you a hand."

We go to the kitchen and I start fiddling with the coffee maker.

"I know how to work this thing," I say. "Might not look like it, but I do."

"What can I do for you, Brendan? Everything okay..?" Nathan waits for an answer but he doesn't get one because I don't know how to start and because I'm a coward sometimes; so then he carries on. "Sorry about what Cheryl said to Ste. You know she didn't mean to be rude, it just... comes out that way sometimes."

"She told me about your... trouble, with having a baby. I'm sorry."

"Thanks. There's still quite a lot of hope though, did she tell you? The specialist seems pretty confident it'll happen even before we get into the IVF. Cheryl's healthy, she's lost weight, she's doing all the right things."

"Hope is good. But you'll stand by her either way."

"Is that a question or an instruction?"

"Sorry."

He smiles.

"It's Cheryl I fell in love with, not her potential to make heirs. Course I'll stand by her."

The coffee machine starts doing its thing, and we stand looking at it.

"Any cups in that cupboard?" I ask, and he has a look and starts getting them out. "Is there somewhere you can go tonight, Nathan? You and Chez? Instead of staying here."

"Sorry?"

"I shouldn'a told Chez you could stay over. It's... The kids ain't slept in their room yet, have they, it... it don't seem right, someone else beating them to it."

"Oh." He seems unconvinced.

"It ain't just about the kids."

"Sorry, I don't..."

And then my sister comes in.

"What are yous two gassing about in here? I've come to hurry you up, I think Ste needs his cup of coffee – he's getting a wee bit grumpy, god love him."

"Steven's fine," I say, "Or he will be when this is sorted."

I look at Nathan.

"I'll sort it then, shall I?" says Cheryl. "Pass the cups."

"I'm just going to give Mum a call, check she's okay," Nathan says, and he disappears off to the bedroom.

:::::::

The dessert and the coffees are finished, and I need to think about heading off to the club.

"We'd better get our bags into our room, Nate," Cheryl says, "Or Brendan will be falling over them going out the door."

I watch Steven's face darken.

"We won't be putting our bags in the room," Nathan says to Cheryl. "Got a surprise for you."

"What? What surprise?" She looks just like she looked as a little girl back home.

"We've got a room at the Grosvenor tonight."

"Nate!" She throws her arms around his neck.

"Well, we're doing budget tomorrow night so I thought my girl deserved a treat. Room service for breakfast, how about that?"

I catch his eye over her shoulder and I nod my head and I think, _Thank you_. And when I look at Steven I can see that he's read the glance between Nathan and me.

He looks lighter than he looked a minute ago.

"We can walk there, can't we?" Cheryl asks. "It's a nice night."

They leave at the same time as me, and when Steven and Cheryl embrace there's warmth in it going both ways. Somehow he's put away the side of himself that can't forgive her, and what's left is love. He astounds me.

"See you later," I say to him as we go, but half way down the stairs I say to Nathan and my sister, "I just gotta... I'll catch you up, I forgot my... I forgot something." And I run back up to the flat.

He's clearing up when I go in, and when he sees me he puts the cups back down on the coffee table.

"Thought you'd gone."

"I have," I say. "I've got to go."

"Okay."

He stands and waits for me to say something.

"I love you. Okay? I'm sorry for – "

"I love you too. I love you, Brendan."

His lips taste sweet. I feel his heart thumping as I crush him against me, and then I feel my own as it starts beating again.


End file.
